Skift Take

Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, June 29 in New York City. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Rashaad Jorden

Today’s edition of Skift’s daily podcast looks at how much top online travel CEOs were paid last year, TikTok as a travel agent recruitment tool, and the future of events in U.S. states that ban abortion.

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Episode Notes

Skift has published the list of the highest-paid online travel agency CEOs for 2021, and Expedia Group chief Peter Kern came out on top, taking home $296 million in total compensation, writes Executive Editor Dennis Schaal.

Kern’s 2021 pay reportedly makes him the third-highest compensated CEO in the U.S. and it dwarfs that of his industry peers. Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel, the second-highest paid online travel agency CEO, took home $54 million for 2021. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky took home $120 million in 2020, which Schaal writes seems like a relatively paltry sum compared to what Kern received last year.

However, Schaal adds that comparing online travel agency CEO pay is a fruitless exercise. Kern’s 2021 compensation package — based partly on the performance of Expedia’s stock from the time he took over as CEO through the end of 2021 — covers four years, including Covid-stricken 2020, while Chesky’s pay in 2020 covered a 10-year period. In addition, the pay disclosures also reveal a wide disparity in employee compensation at major online travel agencies, especially between Booking.com and Airbnb.

We turn now to how travel companies are looking to fill staffing shortages. Instead of just increasing salaries and benefits, some corporations are getting creative in their quest to attract workers — including using TikTok as a recruitment tool, reports Corporate Travel Editor Matthew Parsons.

Spain-based corporate travel agency TravelPerk is one such company. Chief Revenue Officer Jean-Christophe Taunay-Bucalo said its team in Germany suggested using TikTok to recruit travel consultants after hearing about other companies’ successful campaigns on the popular social media platform. Taunay-Bucalo added that TikTok has helped TravelPerk reach its targeted demographic of candidates between the ages of 23 and 28 since younger workers, he believes, are no longer interested in using Facebook or LinkedIn.

Finally, the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion is already having a major impact on the events industry. Andrea Doyle, the Senior Editor for Skift Meetings, reports that many planners are vowing not to conduct events in states with anti-abortion policies.

Although there is a precedent for changes in state laws causing events to move, Doyle writes the reversal of Roe v. Wade has the potential to have a huge impact with so many states being affected at once. She cited LavaCon, a conference for content strategists, as one event impacted by last week’s Supreme Court ruling. Jack Molisani, the executive director of the conference, pulled its 2023 gathering from Austin due to Texas’ trigger law banning abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

However, Doyle adds planners have to consider critical contractual obligations if they’re looking to cancel or relocate their events from states with anti-abortion laws in place. Attorney Lisa Sommer Devlin said event planners should seek legal advice before making such decisions since they could, for example, end up owing damages to a hotel in the event of a cancellation.

Skift Take

While operating 65,000 empty rooms in apartments and homes may be a logistical challenge even for Europe’s largest hotel operator, Accor seeks to hire enough people to manage the operations.

Peden Doma Bhutia

Hotel operator Accor is recruiting 12,000 temporary overseas employees to operate 65,000 empty rooms in apartments and homes in Qatar as temporary fan housing for the 2022 soccer World Cup, its chairman and CEO Sébastien Bazin told Reuters.

Qatar is working to avoid an accommodation shortage during the tournament and has hired Accor, Europe’s largest hotel operator, to manage the temporary operation.

“65,000 rooms is like opening 600 hotels, so we committed to hire enough people to serve it,” Bazin said, adding that a drive is underway in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and South America to recruit housekeepers, front-desk staff, logistics experts and others.

“All that is going to be dismantled at the end of December,” he said.

Qatar’s official World Cup accommodation website has received around 25,000 bookings so far, and will offer more than 100,000 rooms, Omar Al Jaber, executive director of accommodation for tournament organisers the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy told reporters on Tuesday.

“We will be under pressure until the first match has started. This is normal and we are ready,” Al Jaber said.

Qatar hopes to attract 1.2 million visitors, nearly half of its population, during the 28-day tournament in November and December.

But the tiny Gulf Arab state has fewer than 30,000 hotel rooms, according estimates by Qatar Tourism, and 80 percent of those rooms have been block booked by world soccer’s governing body FIFA, for official guests, World Cup organisers said.

Qatar is also offering 4,000 rooms on two cruise ships moored at Doha Port, 1,000 Bedouin-style desert tents and rooms in pre-fabricated fan village cabins.

Pre-booked accommodation is mandatory for ticketed fans who plan to stay overnight in Qatar during the World Cup, Al Jaber said. Without accommodation, most fans won’t be issued a mandatory fan ID, which doubles as a visa to Qatar.

To operate hotel-style rooms in homes and apartments will be a massive logistical challenge for Accor, Bazin said.

The hotel operator is shipping 500 containers from China, filled with furnishings, from sofas to silverware. Accor will re-deploy its fleet of trucks, busses and cars from Mecca in neighbouring Saudi Arabia to overcome an expected shortage of available vehicles in Qatar during the tournament, he said. It has also sourced a local company to launder the 150 tonnes of dirty linen the operation will generate each day.

(Reporting by Andrew Mills; Editing by Toby Davis)

This article was written by Andrew Mills from Reuters and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive Content Marketplace. Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected].