Ceo Journal

It’s hard to feel sorry for Darren Huston . After all, he runs the world’s biggest travel company which shows no signs of stopping and which has been gobbling up almost everything in its path. Let’s do the numbers first before we get to the sorry part. According to its latest financial results, announced Nov 4, third quarter gross travel bookings reached $13.8 billion, an increase of 28% over a year ago. Gross profit was $2.6 billion, 32% up on the prior year. And evidence that its international expansion is working – its international operations contributed gross profit of $2.3 billion, a 33% increase versus a year ago. Hard to feel sorry, right? But during his session at Phocuswright in Los Angeles last month, one almost did. One, Darren Huston spoke about the problems of size. Two, when asked about how he was managing Steve Hafner and the Kayak acquisition made two years ago, he said, “You don’t manage Steve.” And three, a fire alarm went off in the middle o