Q: Which is the fastest jet right now – Booking.com, priceline.com,Agoda.com or Rentalcars.com? And which do you think has the most potential for growth?

All our brands are growing nicely and have been gaining market share over recent years. In our last reported results to 31 March 2012, our domestic gross bookings grew 12% in the quarter to $4.9 billion pa whilst International gross bookings grew 54% in the quarter to $18.8 billion pa.

I think all our brands have good potential for growth and, in particular, our international brands. It’s hard for me to pick out one international brand from Booking.com, Agoda.com and Rentalcars.com as they are all doing well (and I’m a Director at all 3 and so don’t want to upset 2/3 of my colleagues!).

Booking.com continues to build out its #1 platform in online hotels globally which is a significant growth opportunity, Agoda.com continues to have lots of opportunity ahead in expanding its strong network of hotels and distribution in the fast-growing APAC market both as a destination and for APAC customers with their travel to other parts of the world, and Rentalcars.com has grown strongly and scalably for several years now as an online rental car service in over 4,000 locations for an international audience of leisure travelers.

Q: How do you manage such a fleet of fighter jets – without them colliding into each other?

I believe that compared to a lot of groups we have a relatively lean control tower operation to manage our fleet of jets! Which in the last 12 months involved selling 156 million room nights and 26 million rental car days globally.

Our Priceline Group strategy has been to operate each of our brands independently and to develop each business through organic growth by empowering entrepreneurial management teams. Although operated separately, we encourage where it adds value for our brands to share supply, customer flows and best practices. We always aim for strong communication, flat management structures and have a bias for action which all help keeping a successful fleet in the air.

Q: Can all your fighter jets keep flying at the same speed? What could go wrong?

We’re certainly aiming to keep each of our brands flying fast to grow share in each of their respective markets and remain paranoid about what could go wrong. A big mistake would be to lose sight of our customers’ needs, and so website usability, customer satisfaction and ongoing loyalty remain key priorities for us. Not forgetting developing our people and strong recruitment which are also critical as our business continues to grow globally and expand in new markets.

Q: Where is the growth coming from? 

Our growth is coming from a number of areas. Firstly, the shift from offline to online benefits us as an online player. Then there is geographic expansion as Booking.com expands globally, Agoda.com grows its Asian offering and Rentalcars.com markets more product globally as well.

In addition, more and more accommodation operators are wanting to work with our brands with some 235,000 properties currently marketed on our sites, up from 170,000 a year earlier. Strategic Partnerships is another area that has contributed to our growth where we partner with other travel websites to market accommodation alongside a complimentary travel offering.

Mobile is also another growth channel for us and almost from a standing start, our customers completed more than $1 billion in transactions on mobile devices with us in 2011. Finally, I‘d add that the focused approach of our international brands contributes to each of them harnessing as many opportunities in their space as possible.

Q: Everywhere I go, people tell me Booking.com is slaying it – from Europe to Indonesia to Australia. What is it doing right?

Booking.com has been #1 in online hotels across Europe for a number of years now and the investments we’ve made with local operations throughout Asia-Pacific and the Americas in the last few years have developed nicely as well. It’s our focus and passion to help travelers of all backgrounds across the globe easily discover, book and enjoy the best places to stay in the world that passion has driven most of that growth and customer loyalty.

I’d also not underestimate the strong growth achieved by our Agoda.com team fighter jet whose team has done a fantastic job in developing its business as part of the Priceline Group for 5 years now focusing on deep inventory, great content and strong pricing for travelers to Asian destinations and destinations popular with Asian travelers. When I travel (which is quite often!) I’m proud to hear great feedback about both our hotel brands from Indonesia to Australia to Hong Kong to Japan to …

Q: Which markets are you putting future bets on? What’s your plan for Japan? What’s your view on hotel distribution in Japan?

We don’t tend to make bets on markets and focus mostly on effectively satisfying customer demand by market, product type and budget levels.

For Japan, for both Agoda.com and Booking.com, we have had teams based locally for a few years now to support over 3,000 Japanese hotel, ryokan and other accommodation partners in marketing their accommodation with best rates, strong availability and great content, and support our business in helping Japanese travelers use our websites to enjoy the best places to stay in the world and the best rental car deals available.

In particular, consumers from many, many countries use our websites to book accommodation in Japan with strong inbound markets for us including China, US, France, Thailand, Australia and UK. Japan also represents an important point of sale for Rentalcars.com for leisure trips to Hawaiian Islands, Australia and West Coast USA amongst others. Growth in rental cars has also been strong to European destinations so far this year where Japanese consumers have been able to take advantage of a strong Yen versus the Euro.

Q: What are the problems yet to be solved in hotel distribution in particular and travel distribution in general?

I continue to believe that there is still a fantastic revenue management opportunity for most accommodation providers around the world to build their business with greater focus on real-time pricing, inventory management and online marketing, particularly for smaller, independent properties. That’s where services like Agoda.com and Booking.com help hotels market to a very wide audience of travelers from around the world with promotional opportunities, great content presentation, multi-lingual marketing and customer service capability.

Q: Three trends you think will have impact on our industry in next few years …

Apple, Facebook & Google are three platforms that are having a huge impact on global consumers. All three companies are moving fast, developing new offerings and shaping customer behavior, and I’d expect their influence on the online travel market to continue to develop rapidly in the next few years.

All our brands are investing in products and services to leverage these trends and aim to help hotels and rental car companies, large and small, to make the most of these distribution opportunities.