The chairman of Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE), Barry Diller, has recently decisions in mind with the direction of the company. Then CEO, Mark Okerstrom, was let go from the company recently after perceived failures to integrate the many components of the travel giant into one cohesive whole. Diller now controls the travel giant in the interim as he looks for other people to head the travel booking company, which once was the dominant player in online travel booking but has faced fierce competition from many upstart booking sites in recent years.
After joining Expedia in 2006, Okerstrom quickly rose through the ranks and was considered a key player in the business before coming CEO. He was a close ally to original CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who had founded Expedia and left the company a few years ago to become the CEO of embattled ride-share company Uber (NASDAQ: UBER). When Khosrowshahi left the company, it was no question that Okerstrom would succeed him seeing as the two were so close while at Expedia. For a while, everything seemed to be going along well, but Okerstrom's failure to raise the share price in an economy where more people chose to travel likely led to his departure from the company. Shares dropped sharply on the news of Okerstrom's exit.
Okerstrom talked about making a "frictionless" travel experience for the millions of customers that book through the travel site each year. The former CEO discussed in a recent conference how Expedia had so many different components to its travel business-flights, hotels, rental cars, travel insurance, and several other ventures as a part of its overall strategy-but not much in the way of connecting those ventures into a broader experience for the user. He wanted to make the customer experience on Expedia frictionless to better sell the overall scope of what the travel service had to offer. However, these changes did not do much to push the stock's price higher, and now Diller has to find new leadership as the travel industry changes.