Mark Okerstrom, Expedia Inc.

Executives from the hotel, cruise, tours, retail, OTA and destination marketing sectors talk about their assumptions and plans for the year ahead. The interviews were conducted by Travel Weekly editor in chief and senior vice president Arnie Weissmann.

Mark Okerstrom, President and CEO, Expedia

Generally, we're optimistic for 2018. Our biggest market is the U.S., and [the Trump tax cut] could bode well for consumer spending and possibly corporate spending. Things are looking good, and certainly our forward bookings for the U.S. supports that.

Western Europe is our next-biggest market, and it looks like  knock on wood  it's on relatively stable footing. Better than the last two or three years.

There has been some short-term volatility in sentiment towards OTAs, but broadly speaking, they continue to thrive. In our business, at the end of the third quarter, volume is up 13% year over year. That's against a backdrop of industry growth of about 6%.

We haven't seen an impact in our overall business from [the Marriott-Starwood merger or hotel direct booking campaigns]. We certainly don't like the undercutting of prices on direct channels versus our own channels, but we have found that customers booking hotels aren't brand loyal. Less than half a percent of Hotels.com's searches look for the largest hotel brand by name.

Hotels that are not pricing competitively are beaten by peers who are, and as a result, the big global chains that engage in this activity are drifting down in sort-order and losing share in our marketplace. Generally, that's been a good thing for us, and if it's also working out for the chains that do this, then maybe this is a new equilibrium. Consumers do, however, have a brand affinity for OTAs, and we can prove it. Loyalty is on the rise.

In 2018, we're going to be much more focused on building up leadership positions in the priority countries where we operate. We're focusing on making sure we've got all the inventory where customers want to stay; that we've got the right payment types; and that we've got the right tone of voice in our localization efforts. We're talking about becoming locally relevant globally, as opposed to just going global.

And you'll see us trying to solve true customer pain points, using artificial intelligence and chatbots, getting much better at being able to know customers and being able to deliver real, personalized experiences.

HomeAway continues to make a very strong transition from a listings business into an e-commerce business. Making its inventory bookable on Expedia and Hotels.com will be a big story.

The remaining focus for us is speed of execution. Having clear priorities, having them shared across the organization and really moving with speed.

Acquisitions? Well, never say never. I think we've always been very acquisitive, and even though we don't have anything to announce today, it would surprise me if there weren't acquisitions over the course of 2018.

The New Distribution Capability (NDC) is an evolving space, and we're working closely with airline and GDS partners to define the future state. To the extent the standards are fully implemented across the industry, they may present opportunity for us, but the question is, how quickly can the technology infrastructure be put into place.

We're still big supporters of the GDSs and hope that they can ultimately play a big part in this NDC transformation. They have shown the ability to handle huge amounts of scale and to be able to amortize that cost of connectivity across the whole industry. That adds value.

In brand Expedia, you'll see some new features in the first part of 2018, particularly shopping-cart functionality that people in the industry have been dreaming of for many years. And you're going to see us push further into voice in 2018.

[Could Expedia make a deal with former Expedia chief and current Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi?] There's nothing immediate to announce; we're still focused on our respective areas. But I think it's possible for the future.