The Skift Podcast

For this episode we're focusing on the urban environment and talking to our friends at MasterCard about how cities and technology companies are working together to make smarter, more seamless environments. Joining us for the podcast is Hany Fam, a 20-year veteran of Mastercard and its President of Enterprise Partnerships, where he is focused on bringing the company's network, analytics, products and solutions to areas outside of its traditional payment sphere. Along with Fam, we hear from Seth Schultz, Director of Research, Measurement & Planning at C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group. C40 is a 10-year-old network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change.

Family travel is one of the fastest growing segments in tourism, accounting for a third of all leisure trips. This podcast looks at the family travel segment and what it has become as generations have aged, the economy has changed. Guests: Rainer Jenss, president and founder of the Family Travel Association and George Fleck, VP of global brand management for Le Meridien and Westin

In this week's episode of the Skift Podcast, we're asking why the United States is not a vacation nation — and why it matters. We hear from Gary Oster, managing director of Project: Time Off, a coalition started as an initiative by the U.S. Travel Association to promote the benefits of taking vacation. We also welcome Dr. Ken Matos, senior director of research at the Families and Work Institute.

In this podcast, we’re talking about the question of marketing and selling travel in a time of crisis, whether that means vacations to Paris after the recent terror attacks or cruises in the Caribbean in the midst of a Zika outbreak. We’re joined by longtime travel agent Yaron Yarimi, who has reassured or redirected customers around trouble spots for more than two decades; and Cristyne Nicholas, previous president & CEO of NYC & Company, and now co-founder and CEO of Nicholas & Lence Communications, a strategic communications firm.

For this episode we take a deep dive into how Marriott is reshaping how brands — both in travel and beyond — rethink their role in content production and distribution. Marriott International has been a pioneer in this area, launching its own studio in late 2014 to create content for the company’s brands. We speak to David Beebe, Marriott International’s vice president of global creative and content marketing.

A report published by CB Insights showed 2015 as one of the greatest year for travel tech funding, with more than $5.2 billion invested across 348 deals. What does this year hold for startups? To help walk us through what’s happening on the venture capital front, Skift reporter Alexandra E. Petri and Skift News Editor Dennis Schaal sat down with Marcelo Ballvé, Research Director at CB Insights, and Krish Jagirdar, associate at Brand New Matter, which has investments in Rocketrip and Yatra and consults with early-stage startups on transforming their businesses.

Gone are the days of foldout maps and paperback guidebooks meant to help travelers navigate new terrain. Today’s it’s all about mobile apps, which in a highly-digitized environment are valuable tools not just for consumers to understand and explore new terrain but for businesses to better comprehend consumer habits and trends. To help walk us through what’s happening with local discovery, we sat down with Dennis Crowley, co-founder and executive chairman of Foursquare, and his colleague Sarah Spagnolo, editor at large for the company and a veteran of travel publishing.

When many people think health and wellness, they think spas, meditation, and yoga, but over the last two decades it has evolved into so much more. Now the field encompasses women-only surf retreats, health-conscious hospitality brands, a new focus on men and families, high-energy escapes, healthy cruising, on-demand massages, amid more -- all fueling a multi-billion dollar opportunity. To better understand what's happening across the sector, we talk with Jason Moskal, VP of lifestyle brands for IHG (in charge of its EVEN hotels) and Susie Ellis, CEO at Global Wellness Institute and President of Spafinder Wellness.

With our kickoff 2016 episode, Skift staffers Jason Clampet, Alexandra E. Petri, and Rafat Ali discuss highlights from the 15 big trends affecting travel in 2016. These trends are playing out across the global travel industry, from changing consumer habits, to the big marketing changes happening, to how consumer data are finally being used to understand the traveler.

With YouTube, Vimeo, GoPro, and hundreds of channels in HD, the choices of what to watch and how are greater than ever. The traditional travel programming isn’t dead, but how we see it has radically changed. And what we expect to see as viewers continually challenges media brands to rethink how they distribute their programs, how viewers discover them, and the devices they watch them on. To better understand what we see and why we're seeing it, we talk with two leaders in travel programming. Ross Babbit, SVP Programming at Travel Channel, and Betsy Sanner Ayala, VP of Programming and Production at PlanesTrains+Automobiles.

Packing is an integral part of the travel experience, one that we all experience no matter where we are going or how we get there. To talk about the evolution of luggage, and the art of packing, we’re speaking with Diego Saez-Gil, CEO of Bluesmart, which has created the first crowd-funded carryon and Brad John, co-founder of travel retailer Flight 001.

Smartphones are at the center of the evolution of guest experience at hotels. Third-party services are quickly developing apps and tools that transform personal devices into portals for the hotel experience. In this week's episode of the Skift Podcast, we talk about the future of in-room technology and the evolving guest experience, with Chris Holdren, senior vice president of Starwood Preferred Guest and Digital, and Justin Effron, CEO of hospitality engagement platform ALICE.

Lifestyle hotels were once a niche segment of the larger hotel industry, but have since grown to become the most talked about and coveted of hotels. Much of the appeal of these well-designed properties is the expectation of a branded guest experience. In this week's podcast, we explore the relationship between company culture and guest experience at lifestyle hotels, as well as the drastic changes and competition facing these brand. Guests: Elon Kenchington, the COO of the Gansevoort Hotel Group, and Josh Fluhr, the COO of Morgans Hotel Group.

The humble bike is experiencing a cultural renaissance. Bike share programs are popping up in cities all over the world from New York to Medellín, city streets are transforming with the addition of painted bike lanes, and boutique bike brands are discovering a new and growing customer base. In this week's podcast, we discuss the evolution of bike transportation in the U.S. and beyond. Guests: Dani Simmons, who has worked in sustainable transportation in New York City for 11 years and currently serves as the director of communications and government affairs at Motivate (operators of Citibike), the nation’s largest bike share operator; and Dean DiSimone, who went from architect to media executive to owner of Tokyobike New York, which sells well-designed, lightweight bikes based on the concept of Tokyo Slow.

World-renowned museums will always have a spot at the top of tourists’ bucket lists. A small but growing group of entrepreneurs are responding to travelers’ changing expectations by building high-touch, low-tech experiences in these cultural institutions that share a different story the general public wouldn’t otherwise know how to find. In this week's podcast, we discuss the rise of these "untour" alternative tour companies and what's driving their growth. Guests for this episode: Nick Gray, founder of MuseumHack, which runs fast-paced tours through New York’s most famous museums, and David Behringer, founder of The Two Percent, which runs a live audio tour of New York art exhibitions.