August 5, 2025 • 50 mins
Ep. 48 – Expedia OGs Talk Online Travel Origins, Ticketing & Vegas Demand with Daniel Wathen
What do Las Vegas call centers, hotel sort order manipulation, and Taylor Swift ticket chaos have in common? They’re all part of the wild evolution of travel and ticketing—seen through the eyes of industry veteran Daniel Wathen.
In this episode, Daniel joins host Mario Bauduin to unpack over 25 years of online travel, from the early days at Las Vegas Reservation Systems and TravelScape to Expedia’s global rise. They trade stories from the OTA front lines, reveal how hotels learned to revenue manage (thanks to folks like them), and explain why Las Vegas demand is shifting in 2025.
Topics covered include:
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The link between hotel parity and ticketing transparency
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Why dynamic pricing isn’t always revenue management
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The rise of event travel and how destinations can plan for it
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Las Vegas economics, Canadian last-minute travelers, and the cost of $50 cocktails
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How tour routing and hotel strategy can maximize margins for artists and promoters
If you're into the business of travel, ticketing, or entertainment-driven demand, this one delivers both insight and nostalgia.
Connect with Daniel Wathen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-wathen-796b06/
More about his work: https://www.learnchatshare.com
Follow the show @Tix2TravelPod on all platforms
More episodes at www.xpotravel.com/podcast
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
Remember, every ticket is a ticket to travel. Safe travels.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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welcome to tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences.
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I'm your host, Mario Bwin, and on today's pod we have Daniel Watan. Welcome to the pod. Good morning, Mario. I, it in reverse. I'm usually the one interviewing, so it's Oh, that. Okay. So I can see why this might be a little awkward. But also this is a conversation that's long overdue, man.
We've known each other. Oh yeah. We've known each other for. I dare say, shouldn't we say a long time? , I think one way to, to start this off. Yeah. It's gotta be like 25 years. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We were babies when we were we, yeah, because it's 2000. Yeah. So I probably started, I started what, April of 2001, I think.
Oh, nice. Oh, nice. And you were there before, it was August 99, right? So August 99. All right. So what we have to talk about is one, yes, we've known each other a long time, but where we started, because I like to say, Hey I'm a one of the old school. Travel scape, Expedia, guys who were one of the first team members, I would say it was probably like 15, 20 of us who did the initial contracting for hotels.
And my story always goes, Daniel, like I was the guy who would just sit in the hotel lobby and say, I'm gonna put your hotel on the internet. We're gonna make millions of dollars. And they would say, shut up kid. Get outta here. Luckily that all worked out. But you have even more of a, I think a story because you started out at not travel scape.
But at LVRS, I was hired originally by LVRS and for everyone. That's Las Vegas reservation system, which That's right. Was the primary business of the soon to become. Fully branded travel scape, and people are like, what's travel scape? Is that like Netscape Travel or what? What is that? But yeah. Yeah. So Mario, when I was hired, I got hired at a company where I was like, internet travel.
What's that? Yeah. Yeah. But tell me about that. Was it, so you had Tim and Tom who were the original founders of Travel Ski, right? Or LVRS. The story goes that they were, where they go to San Diego State or something, and they had a business where they would buy ads for people who would come to Las Vegas.
And so they just started getting inventory at their friends' hotels before that. Tim, I think it's Tim. Tim actually. Worked at, I'm gonna, Tim, if you're watching us, I hopefully if you watch hit me up. Number one, call me number two. He was working valet at Palace Station. Okay. And and they went to school with the Titas, right?
They were friends with the Titas? Yes. They were all part of the involved in the. For T and for those that don't know, they were the original owners of station casinos. Every single night was about like trying to pull people in for walk-ins, right?
So Tim just got hey, there's distressed inventory. And and he built a, like a peg board which was a which by the way was in a storage closet when we were back at Expedia was, so we Wow that that historical item is owned by Expedia brand right now, or eeg. So yeah he's I guess he said, Hey I can do this.
Better or what have you. And so they said, prove it. And so he started working on it, and that morphed into this business model that became Las Vegas reservation systems and at the time it was all call center, right? So it was calling for room inventory from the Las Vegas properties every single day.
We'll get into what the, what's changed with the technology. And then and then there was no online. When they started that, right? Yeah. And so then they launched the sort of first version of Las Vegas reservation systems, what they thought perfected it, got it. Running, making money, and then said, oh there's other destinations outside of Las Vegas.
We should open this up. That was when I was hired, was the. We're opening up to the, so the rest of the United States. You were the first New York City market manager. I was the second New York City market manager. Oh, shout out to who, who was the first, first, the first name? Her name was Jamie Pane.
Oh. She went on at the time, she went on maternity leave and I came in because I ran. All the rest of the it was New York right? And then it was the entire, like half of the United States. Yep. And so they're like, Hey, you know what you're doing? Come in and run New York. And it's so funny, dude.
I. I hadn't thought of Jamie Paone until you said that. And then a picture of her just popped into my brain Yes. Of, because when she came back from attorney, she was doing some of the training and stuff. Yeah. But I didn't realize she was the first contractor. That's funny. She was the first for New York.
Yeah. When I started there were probably 700 listings on the travel scape side outside of Vegas. And then within a year, I personally probably onboarded 2000. It sounds about right. Properties. Yep. And so you get really good at negotiating when you're getting told no at every single first conversation.
And this is when we started we used us as a comparison point against that horrible company at the time. hotels.com no. It wasn't hotels.com Daniel. It was yeah, it was what was it? Hotel Reservations Network also as HRN. Yeah, because you were early days of the battle. So was I though in Miami and shout out to se Beltran, like she and I would meet each other in a lobby and the hotel would be like, oops, we double booked them.
And it was like this really awkward sort of Crips and bloods type of gag. Situation where like any weapons yeah. So yeah it was that, and HRN they vary their commissions. They're holding you hostage on room blocks and we had just one. One commission model.
Yeah. That was the difference, right? Is that travel scape allowed the hotels to raise the rate and we had that sort of variable margin. So we would encourage them to do it because we'd make more money. The problem be became that. HRN would just, they would raise their margin, but they wouldn't allow them to raise the net rate.
Yeah, exactly right. So they were getting cheated. In their eyes. It was a traditional wholesale model. Look, I bought your rooms. And I own them, so let me put them out and I can charge whatever I want based on demand versus it was more of a partnership on the travel scape side where we were, Hey, we're gonna flex with you, we're still gonna make our 25, 30%.
Yeah. Whether it goes up or down. But at the end of the day, we were, and I say this to a lot of people too, that we were probably that wave of contractors who were training a reservations manager to become a revenue manager. I would say that revenue management fundamentals, including parity, did not exist.
And if they did, it'd be like 5% of current, right? So there were no revenue management systems. It was all here your experience, right? Yeah. And and the models were as you described, the models were very different, so in order to keep your commission slash margin down with HR end, you had to throw more rooms in.
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You had to maintain that 10 block. If not, they were gonna take 45% commission, 50% commission, what have you. We being HRN could truly revenue manage or commission manage. And that's what we did on the travel scape side. We I think the statute of limitations has been long enough. We owned inventory a, KA, we had contracted inventory that we had to pay for. We didn't really own, it took risk but but I had to revenue manage that inventory. And it was like, we gotta sell 10 more rooms. What are we gonna drop it $5?
And yeah, no, I think 50% of my job at that time, you remember managing three properties. Anyway. That, yeah, we, I mean there's so many places we could go in terms of, but I think that's the other piece that people probably don't understand is that back then, 20 years ago, we did everything.
We would go contract the hotel, we'd load the hotel into the system. Yeah. We'd gather all the content, all the photos and then we would manage it. And even from a market perspective, we manage the sort order, which is now like this thing where people are like. Oh, it's all automated and just based on personalization.
It's automated, right? But back then it was like I, it was like day trading. I could call a hotel and be like, Hey, can you drop your rate by X amount? And then I'll pop you up to the top of the sword order. Once the inventory goes, you drop off and I'll find another one. And like you're basically. Doing deals the entire time.
In very short stints, because we have the data. We knew when the demand was coming in and we can get ahead of it depending on who gave us more inventory. I have to tell you, this is a Mario Daniel moment, I'm on a, I'm on a call and it's a, it's an abrasive call, right? And I am like, okay. Hey can you refresh your screen?
'cause they're in our sort order. Can you refresh your screen? On the other end? What happened to me, I go, if you don't gimme that rate, that's just what happened. And they're like, literally. Pushed them down. You just like them. I got Mario's because the partners in Florida were nicer, right?
He's Ooh, you're vicious. I was like, that. Those days were fun, man. We had a lot of power and, but I don't think we, we understood that we had the power, at least, no, at the beginning. We definitely used the tools and we had things were way faster than so that you could do certain activities like that.
I don't think there's any online. A company today that has doesn't have some like super complex algorithm that's running their running their sort of, or what have you. Yeah. And the personalization, depending on where that IP address is or what destination there.
Yeah. There, there's what you on. Yeah. But back then it was just like one set of demand coming in. I think we're doing limited. Google ad buying, right? Like it wasn't, there was no Google, it's like there was no Google, a OL Yahoo. It was Yahoo. Yeah. And we became popular very quick with certain hotels.
Yeah. I think we did. We did. Yeah. So when you when did you real cause you were at Expedia for a long time. You were there for 15 years. 22. 22 years. That's like being in the military or something, man, at the end it felt like it a little I'm sure at my pension. But you've seen my dad was in the military for 22, 23 years.
But it, to be at a company for 22 years you've seen everything Yeah. In online travel, right? Yeah. There's nothing but stories now and remember the time. But how did your role evolve over those days, those early days to, yeah. I think originally I was hired as a product manager.
If that's what we did, we managed onboarding product. Product meaning hotels. Yeah. Bring on as much as possible. It wasn't like now what product management is all associated with technology and technology and enhancements, And so that changed very quickly into un no, we manage markets 'cause.
Once we had a certain product breadth, then we're managing actual markets. And you can't jump from St. Louis to New York. You need to understand New York City versus St. Louis. And and I mario will tell you, I was fast and furious. I was, there was nothing stopping me.
I had a lot of energy and I got to that senior role pretty quickly because I was a part of the I'll call myself a product manager insofar as we developed a system called. A hotel inventory management system. Hims the original. Oh me and an industry powerhouse, Carrie Ter, we're a part of that subject matter experts.
'cause I had New York, so I had to be a part of it. Cause that's why shout out to Carrie who hired me for the management came from New York City. So That's right. Everything in hotels starts in New York City, then it goes to Las Vegas and then Yeah. The rest of the world. Yeah. Yeah. So we we helped the Expedia team understand merchant, the merchant business.
Because they came from Microsoft and they were all about travel guides. And the original Expedia was like on a CD rom. CD rom, it was a travel guide, like an electronic travel guide. Get away from those, was it Atla? Who does those? Those, oh, you were, yeah. It was like an encyclopedia, like a CD Rom or a Atlas or that, that was the travel guide.
So yeah, so we educated them on that. Got through all those sort of revenue management fundamentals that we knew from Carrie's experience was Caribbean, Las Vegas, Florida mine was. All the corporate destinations, New York City, et cetera. So we got them to build our first version.
It launched it launched we launched it. The middle of August of 2021, 2001, sorry, 2021. I processed the first extranet change 'cause we had an extranet that hotel suppliers could go on and actually interact with. It triggered a note to me and I processed it on August 25th, 2001. And then three weeks later, nine 11 happened.
Oh boy. Yeah, no, so I remember this vividly because up until that point we were faxing. Oh yeah. Sell and report. Yeah. And the extranet or HIMSS was like this monumental step forward. Yeah. And then we became trainers of it to get We were signing people up left and yeah. Try to get them involved. New York luckily was our beta destination, and there were more users on the extranet say good. Probably 50 users. Cause it's weird, hotel systems at the time were locked out of the internet. They weren't connected.
It's amazing to think about. Which then, you know, especially in online, when you look at online travel over the last 20, 30 years, there's been a couple of different waves and I think the first initial wave was really nine 11, where you and I lived through, through that as, and there's so many associated stories because after nine 11, that was really the rise of online travel.
Oh. Because that's when the hotels were like. This is a lot easier to manage. We're going to be able to put our inventory here and it just disappears, right? Like it gets sold and they get hooked on it If they have the right type of introductory offer Yes. Or something that happens, so that it, it goes from nine 11 and then I would say 2008.
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The sort of economic issues that were happening. Lehman Brothers, yes. And then you see this kind of born out of it as like flash sale sites, right? Yeah, the jet setters, the Groupons, the living socials. And then there's this other shift in online travel few years. Close. Close user groups, right?
Close user groups, and then there's another one with I guess like attractions and ticketing and add-ons in that way. So I feel like the next one is event travel, like around live events. And you've had a little bit of experience with ticketing as well. I think that's where we started reconnect
but over this course, this time, especially during that time of nine 11, what do you think? Change the behavior of not just the industry, but like how the hotels saw the internet. If you think of those two specific periods in addition to COVID this sort of. Duress, that's pressure that's put down on the industry.
And usually they have to lay a lot of people off, right? So not only is it duress, there's pressure in the market, but you have a very small group of individuals that are having to do the same work, and so that's that the, I would say, so it's about efficiency. Nine 11 for the first six months prompted a lot, like 20% of the workforce just got cho,
so really it was like everything that had to do with automated, and this is throughout the last 25 years, every time we hit a another hurdle in automation or another hurdle in revenue management automation, or another hurdle in ai. Involved in it's duress, something hits the market. We have less people and we have to solve for things automatically.
I would say one of the things that prompted folks to go online is the phone lines went down. Which was strange because the internet was up. So the revenue manager could not call me, but could email me and or jump on the extranet and strip out inventory. Or what was happening during that time period?
Remember when the all the planes were grounded? When that happened. Yeah. And I remember all of the. Airport hotels in Florida, not all of them, but a good portion of them started to pull all of their inventory out so that they could raise the rates very high. And I remember all of us sitting in the pit kind of sitting there going do we allow this to happen?
This is complete price gouging. But it was this moment in time where you started to figure out like who was a good person, who was a bad person, and. It really was this technology that allowed us to be able to view it because we were behind the scenes. We saw a news report. 'cause even then it was a little bit slower to get out, but we knew personally, like the person who was like, you know what I don't care you guys.
You can oversell me or whatever, but I'm not gonna honor your reservations. I'm gonna get $2,000 tonight on that one room. Yes. And so it was a very interesting time. As to these type of stories. But I think what we're getting at is that when something big like that happens, travel in of itself and technology is very resilient and it creates these efficiencies with people at hotels or people at distributors like that.
And so I did you see the same thing? Because I wasn't really around in, in that mode around COVID, but how do you think COVID affected everything? COVID we shut Las Vegas off oh, who, like the strip closed. That did not happen during nine 11. And that's what 5,000 planes grounded in less than two hours.
I would say that every single time. There is a huge uplift in travel. Now, it may not be at the rates that everyone wants them to be. But the amount of travel that it's the revenge travel part of this. Like you can't keep the humans locked up for two years and expect that they're not gonna spend every last red scent that they've saved and or the money that they don't have and go travel.
So I think you're gonna see 9 11, 6 months after nine 11 we had a stellar year, but. We were in that super growth mode. So what did we have to compare it with? But the hotel industry rebounded really quickly. And then economic. That takes a little longer, but still I would say 2010, stellar year.
11 stellar, 12 stellar being a part of that was pretty phenomenal. And that's when all the, Hey, we can get more, or, wow, there's revenue management here. We don't have to set one rate for a season. We can actually now vary our rates. Weekend midweek. We can vary our rates by occupancy and what have you by hour.
This the systems got better, right? And they had these revenue folks had access to this and they could make more informed decisions 25 years ago there were not really, and. It was all here. Hey, we're not gonna get any more than $29 rate at Palace Station or wherever it was.
it's interesting that you also have a little bit of ticketing in your background. Oh, yeah. working@atvegas.com and knowing the Las Vegas market, I'm chuckling when you're talking about nine 11 victims. We lived there during nine 11. Yeah. I remember going to Mandalay Bay and hanging out, going to Rum Jungle or whatever it was, and just being empty and going like where is everybody?
Oh yeah. There are no flights coming in. On the ticketing side or the or that when you were at. At vegas.com, did you see the same kind of principles from revenue management and hotels to ticketing? Did you see anything? Yeah, I wouldn't say what's interesting about my career that at various points I've had to actually relearn.
Learning ticketing is a vastly different type of business. Mostly because it is like hotel 20 years ago. Yes. Exactly. And they're only getting better. They're better now at revenue management, but a lot of the systems that they're using are structured like hotel systems were 20 years ago.
It's not revenue management, it's called. Dynamic pricing di Dynamic pricing. Yes. Dynamic pricing. That's really just manual intervention. May have changed in the last year, just the way that ticketing is and it's all distressed inventory.
If you don't sell that ticket for the same day and then it's not, it's it's just an empty seat. Yep. I I would say for a business. That didn't really need to do revenue management. Now they're finding that there is a lot of benefit to that. And so I think what's great about the ticketing industry is they don't have to necessarily learn it Like the hotel industry had to learn it.
They'll adopt fundamentals. I would say quickly because the technologies will just be available once, once the technologists can build out revenue management platforms, , that support all sort hundreds and hundreds of different ticketing platforms. Then there they're gonna get there a lot faster. The hotel industry. I think you're right. It's interesting because it is fragmented from ticketing systems the same way a PMS or a CRS system would be except in the hotel side, you don't have one big monster who kind of controls the supply and the demand in terms of Ticketmaster.
And so that's a little bit of a complexity, I think if you're going to have a platform that manages. Dynamic pricing throughout all these different primary systems. Yes. It's, it, you still gotta get past those guys And I feel like they're making strides. If you go to try to buy your Coldplay tickets you're subjected to dynamic pricing.
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I think a topic that comes up here quite a bit, and it's because you have a revenue management background and some ticketing, the difference being is that hotels. Understand the available inventory. So you can see the prices change and it's 365 days a year versus you have one Beyonce show and you don't know how many available tickets there are.
All you know is that once you hit refresh the price changes. And so there's all this kind of discussion around how, how they should be priced, when at the end of the day there's just a ton of demand coming in over this one particular date. Yeah. To manage. I would say there's a level of complexity also being added that it's not true in the hotel space.
And that is you have a bunch of AI bots that are buying this inventory. So it gets gobbled up, and it gets gobbled up quickly and there's not a human being involved in it necessarily. But the human being is I could, you name an artist, I can't get in. There's no way. To, yep.
Get these tickets and it's revenue managing, and so all this inventory ends up going out on the secondary markets in the future. So there's like a whole secondary. Level of business involved in this, that's not true in the hotel industry, right? That's right. There's no resell hotel.
The secondary business in hotel is Airbnb verbal or it's or you go to another hotel. Yeah. You there's another ho there's not another Beyonce playing in the city. Yeah. That, no that's a good. It's related. It's similar, but definitely different because there's more available inventory at different levels of rates on the hotel side Yeah.
Versus one venue. Yeah. I personally think that in order for, and I'm a disruptor, right? So I think this is two ticket master and access, like they should launch studies about how much inventory gets gobbled up by secondary market. And be open. Is this something that this uncovers everything, right?
Is it the artist probably doesn't care. I'm not saying that Beyonce as a team, right? But they make money depending on how they've negotiated the contract with Ticketmaster on the number of times the tickets gets sold. And so they're they being, some of these folks are probably okay with a ticket turning hands twice.
Because they make a percentage off of that. And so I think it's very complex. Yeah. You don't know how many the artists and the promoter have actually held back for themselves. So let's say they have an Amex deal for their fan club. Yeah. So there's a percentage there, which Amex probably cuts some, a nice check for several million dollars to get the rights to do that.
You have, yes. The resellers, to your point, they will. Gobble 'em up and then put 'em on the secondary market. Then you have this complexity of a fan who can't take out their entire day to go and sit online to buy on the primary. Especially with music touring sport's, a little bit different,
You're always gonna have some type of ticket pricing because there's just more opportunity. But if it's that one tour and fans are trying to get in. A lot of them, they just don't have the time. And so a lot of them have said, Hey, you know what? I'll just wait for it to get to a secondary market, and that's the service they're providing to me.
I think the transparency is one, the artists and the promoter are not really saying how many they've held back to, dictates what the pricing will look like. Yeah. And then on top of that, the. The secondary markets they, Ticketmaster in particular wants to cap the secondary market, but I think that is just like creating like a hotel, getting direct business,
No one else can sell it or you get your capped at $2 or whatever it is. But we're gonna raise the primary ticket pricing and make everybody come to me. So I see both sides. It's really interesting, and I always liken it back to what we were talking about from a hotel revenue management standpoint, that it's different, but similar because revenue management on the hotel side, they're always looking at available inventory based on occupancy.
By day or by night but the user I don't know what Bellagio's occupancy is for August 17th. Okay. But at any given time, you can see what the. Public occupancy is for that we're picking up Beyonce for that Beyonce show on August 17th. She has it coming to her man, no, they, Kevin Carter, but I don't think people know, like they, maybe they at launch they only released 5,000 tickets and they it's right. The map is whatever they say the map is. And so that's what I'm getting at is like, where's the real transparency? And then two weeks later they do a re repricing refresh 'cause it'll take them two weeks to change the pricing.
Yeah. 'cause they'll hold back tickets and then they release another 5,000. And the map says they're sold out. But are they sold out? Who know? You know what so you don't actually know Daniel. That's my point. It's like I see both sides. I understand why ticket master wants this and they wanna be artist first.
Only, but I also thing seller side. How maps are managed was very important to me when I was@vegas.com. Cause we wanted inventory parody and just hey, what kind of access to what seats, et cetera. So we, yeah, I spent a lot of time looking at it and when I go to try and buy a Lady Gaga ticket on the day, and the entire map says that it's on the secondary market.
First, as a consumer, I'm pissed because I want that Lady Gaga ticket that I was trying to buy. Second I don't know if the impossibility of it is to just seems a little a little strange to me I, it's because if it's not available and it's on a secondary market, which secondary market.
It, yeah. It's because Ticketmaster has a second secondary market, where they can revenue manage. Exactly. So that's what I mean it's a very, it's a very complex Yeah. Topic. But it, because I'm like, people like us are interested in it because we saw, I know, you know what, I think I without being subversive, I think there's just a lot of what the ticketing industry has done has shield like, to some extent they're way more public with information.
And I think that's why folks are really curious as to how a ticket price is a ticket price that's different than the hotel industry, and then vice versa. There's a lot of stuff that shielded that not a lot of people understand. No, I, and this is why we try to, I think they're not gonna follow the same tracks.
I think ticketing has enough uniqueness where they're gonna. They're gonna resolve some of their revenue management and make dynamic even more dynamic. I also think there's just a fundamental difference in that hotels are based on seasonality, demand versus the actual demand of a fan base.
Yes. Lady Gaga. It could be in the middle of winter in New York City, she's still gonna sell the place out. It's still out. And so that, that's the, the why this is a passion project of talking about this stuff is because I think live events in general, it's always been this way, but there hasn't been a huge spotlight on it until Taylor Swift, that live event can drive so much demand where wherever it might be.
And so if we are, could go to Lady Gaga and say, Hey, do you wanna make. Yeah. The most money on your packages, hotel packages, do it in New York City in the first two weeks of January. Like it, no one is there. It's freezing cold. And you are gonna get the biggest margin on any of this. I know, but if it's Taylor Swift, it's Wednesday at midnight, she could still sell that stadium out.
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Exactly. And not even blink an eye doing it. But from a business perspective, like people like you and I It doesn't even take much analysis, right? Like we understand the seasonality of a certain market. We understand what capacity looks like in terms of hotel supply around it. You couple that with Madison Square Garden, available seats, and you could still sell a bunch of packages and also create the demand.
And especially if you're doing touring touring, you can, you could pick out certain destinations that could get you bigger margins where. They need the help, essentially. On a shoulder on a low season. And that's some of the conversations that I have, not just on the podcast, but just as a consultant, is really trying to strategically figure out what the most bank for.
Because a lot of the things on the entertainment side, Daniel is driven by. Beyonce, right? She's I think I wanna be in Hawaii when everybody else is in Hawaii because it's cold elsewhere. You're like, ah, you're actually putting a lot of strain by entering a high demand show into an already busy market.
Yeah. And so just like having a quick conversation for us for a fee we could help them understand what the best, Hey, don't platform your whole entire tour based on what you want. Exactly. Yeah. That's pretty much it. You wanna tell the story that you were a business building in all of these destinations?
Let's flip it. Exactly. It would take, it wouldn't take that much for you to do a full analysis and say, Hey this is a preferred or recommended routing. Oh yeah, you can, you could totally do that. And then at the same time, talk to every other theater in those markets about taking that day off.
Or hosting adjacent parties. Yes. To drum up demand because certain destinations are doing this, right? Like I had some guests on where they went to Scotland to cease Taylor Swift. You were there, she had three shows over that course of the week. But they had put wrapped buses of Taylor Swift.
There were like coffee shops doing Taylor Promotions and whether you got into the venue or not. You still experienced the Taylor Swift vibe because you're walking throughout the destination and being able to do this. So that's also another message just to DMO and CBBs and tourism boards to be like, listen, you should, you're probably already talking to Live Nation or whoever else, but if you can get everybody on board, the entire the tide lifts all boats in that particular market because you're.
Piggyback riding on the demand that's coming into it, and I don't think enough. People in these industries understand that it's a systematic process. Yeah. Where people like you, and you and I could come in and be like, here's the plan and is this is how we manage around it, and here are the estimated margins and gross bookings or revenue that you can essentially make with this type of artist.
'cause the data is out there for, from a cold play down to a a red hot chili pepper, whatever it is, there's so much data on the type of demand and the type of sellouts that they do that you could see the effects of the impact in the travel markets. Or just restaurants and other things.
Yeah. I think when these like super performers, 'cause there's a, I mean there's a group of them now, right? Yeah. There's a lot to be said about them warning. A market that they're about to release., Las Vegas in particular you could have three. Big headliners in one week. And or when you're like not to pick on St. Louis, but they don't have a enough hotel inventory to support a large super performer, right? Yeah. So it ends up being the entire southern Illinois and that whole entire area radius, right?
Yeah. And they're I'm sorry. Some small town 20 miles away from the venue, that is still doable. Does not know that something just got released. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of revenue management. , There's some symbiosis I think in these markets. Yeah. Where hey, this is gonna happen.
And so some folks get ahead of it really quickly and then they gouge. Which is not what I'm suggesting. No, but they do it. They should do it in a revenue management fashion, right? Like yeah. Build up the base and then yeah. Because that's what's happening, is that you hear the announce because they don't communicate it.
So I think there's like maybe a gap there, right? Where you could get any of these entertainment companies, whether it be the World Cup or Live Nation or whoever. Yeah. Yeah. Could hire a guy like you to say, I'm gonna communicate this before it hits out. Yeah. Into the markets to manage this in such a way where, yeah, one it's almost a PR role, right?
To consultant will be like, I will tell everyone something is being announced tomorrow on these dates. Be prepared for that. Be prepared. And this is how we suggest you prepare. I'll sign whatever NDA that you want. I will not name the name. No, but I think it's important to, because you and I are very unique in that we have that ticketing and travel Yeah.
Background and there aren't a lot of people who do. . As you look at event travel is what they're coining it. Like where do you see it changing? You saw a bit through the transition of vegas.com and vivid seats and obviously vegas.com is probably a perfect example.
This works because you're contracting hotels, you're contracting tickets for shows. Yes. And you probably have an idea. There's unique shows that come in into play as well. . I would say that that the more unique the experience, the more successful it's going to be, right? And think of this is my story for the rest of my life.
So at 16, I went to Taylor Swift. I didn't, I did not. At 16, I went to Motley Crue. That was pretty big deal. Yeah. Love to see that show. What? I would love to see the show at that time. I can't even tell the story of the show because it has a parental rating. Oh, okay. I'll tell you later. Yeah. Off, off topic.
Yeah. 16. So it's gonna be wildly. I like the Taylor Swifts, the Beyonces, the Benson Boones, Sabrina Carpenters, all of these Super Lady Gaga. They're, that is gonna continue so they're big, they're huge events. It's where a human being can be very human and record the whole thing, right?
Then they have the memory for the rest of their lives. I think I think if you are an up and coming theater production. Something new I something that someone can experience for the first time it's gonna be it's gonna be popular, I think those shows that have been around a long time, that may have movies after them and there's some other sort of format that folks could experience it in, I think they're gonna suffer a bit.
As far as the event travel, if it's in a location. I'm a American and it happens to be in Brazil. Yes. I'm gonna be part of that 2.5 million people that are gonna have the largest concert on the planet ever. You're talking about Lady Gaga, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah. There's no way that 700 square miles of that continent could not support that number of people.
But I think those who would've thought a 2.5 million person event? Would be successful. It was free, right? It was free. It was free, yeah. But it was, there was no there wasn't any issues with it. I don't know. Like I think that's gonna continue for sure. And I think I think good for the artists that they're gonna a lot of these tours are international.
(01:46):
So I think as long as borders are the way they are you can experience anything anywhere. And so I think you're gonna see a lot of folks. Move around the planet in order to go see what they wanna see. I would say a large number of later teen, early twenties folks that I know, they all went to Europe to go see.
Of these artists versus we live in Las Vegas, the entertainment capital of the world. They didn't see them here. They went to Provance or wherever. Those experience elsewhere. And these are huge this is five, six grand that they're spending on these vacations.
This is not this isn't like backpacking through Europe. Per person. Yeah. Per person. They're doing it right. And I'm like. That's wild. That's a whole different mental I think it, it is just a different approach to how they experience these things than, yeah. There's no way. I was at 22, dropping three grand to fly to London. To see Michael Jackson. Now, I probably should have, but there's no way I would've done that. That's not yeah. That it didn't even like, who's doing that? You're exactly right. That's one thing.
When I worked at Paul and we were doing destination festivals. We had a ton of data. We had a lot of consultants, Bain, McKinsey consultants who worked with us. And after you do the surveys because of what's going on in the world inflation housing prices are really expensive now.
So those people in their twenties, the Gen Z millennial they're not trying to save money. They're trying to have experiences. And they will invest in them because also you overlap that with social media and you can make money through social media if you have these very unique, aspirational experiences.
That's been a huge shift. And that was. Confirmed So I think you're right. I think that the attitudes have just shifted and event travels here to stay. And actually I think it's going to grow at various levels. And you live in the perfect place, right? Like you, you can see everything from Lady Gaga to the F1 now to Usher's residency or Wu Tang's residency.
You get to see a lot of it. So I also consider you one of my. Las Vegas experts because I think that was a good chunk of your Expedia life too, was managing Las Vegas, if I remember correctly. Yeah. And so just just to bring it all together as the entertainment capital of the world, as you mentioned, which I believe you.
What's going on right now in Las Vegas? What's, have you seen the numbers drop? Is there a sentiment, there's all this stuff on social media that it's empty and all this and that, which I don't really believe, but what's your take on Las Vegas? You can believe it.
You can believe it. I would say that Vegas is an international destination, so every time in the last 25 years that something has impacted international travel. And that could just be what you mean, like tariffs and Yeah, and immigration law. Exactly. Okay, gotcha. Without getting too political, but there's been some political moments throughout the last 25 years.
Vegas takes a hit. I would also call Vegas a precursor to other hospitality erosions. And Vegas usually happens because it's fully leisure, Then New York gets impacted dc, San Francisco, et cetera. So I would say that we're in that precursor mode. The summer tends to be much more of an in there's more international travel during the summer than there is at various other times of the year.
And so we're just seeing the impact of it. And when you have a whole entire country that doesn't want to become the 51st state yeah. I don't think people realize how much Canadian business this is. Hey, this is the heyday launchpad for a lot of Canadians and they're not really coming right.
So I would say, yeah, we're feeling it here. But then there's so much entertainment and it is ne neat. I'm gonna call Country Niche, but it's not very popular, Kenny Chesney sold out. It's just, the Wizard of Oz is coming to the sphere. That's gonna be cool for a lot of folks to re-experience The Wizard of Oz, so there's just a lot to do. But the summer was always soft in this market, and it's gonna be soft this year. Yeah. I think what I was, I don't think people realize how much Canadian business and Chinese business that comes to Las Vegas. Oh. Monthly. The re, you know what the reason why. A Canadian person in Toronto will decide today that they're coming to Las Vegas.
They can do it. There's direct flights. They will get on the flight. They will not have a hotel when they land. And then they will check in and they're considered a walk-in. 'cause it wasn't it wasn't necessarily a planned trip. They can stay 24 hours. Do whatever it is the Canadian's gonna do here and then get out of town and that's a real, that's a real thing.
And they'll do it on a random Wednesday. And so it's just and that there, there's a huge volume of that. We were doing studies at ex Expedia, and this was one of the weird facts that popped out of it, is you know who's who what demographic. Jumps on a plane last minute and comes to the city and it was Canadians over someone from la Everyone thinks LA oh, it's so close.
They'll just drive in. No, it was Canadians from Vancouver and Toronto. , Is there a percentage that you would see? Yeah, I can I could come up with a number. It was enough to be significant. For you to remember blast blasted you think 250 radius to 250 mile radius to Vegas.
Oh, that's all the last minute travel. Nope. It was Canadians. It was wild. No, I, there's been so much talk about and a lot of, so the other piece in Las Vegas that I see and what I've heard I've had a couple people challenge this on social media with me. It's just that it's too expensive now.
And that even Americans don't wanna go to Vegas because I guess Resorts world just pulled back parking. Now they've made it free again. But there's all these pieces of resort fees and parking and entry into clubs, table service. It's the GDP of a small country just to hang out with Tiesto or whatever it might be.
Do you feel like the pricing has also been a deterrent or as a, it's just compounded with all the other international market stuff? As a local, it would be a splurge for me to go to a day club, as a local. So even if I, Uber, that's 50 bucks. Everything's 50. Remember when it used to be five and $10 or $20 max or what have you this 4 99 steak and eggs, man when you lived here it was it's 50 $50 to park, it's $50 to get in.
It's $50 a drink round so it's just 50 50 50. These things add up. I'm just making up these numbers just to give everyone you're dropping. Yeah. In any given day, like. 500 to a grand so it is it is expensive. I've done personal analysis. Sometimes it is cheaper to go to Hawaii.
Wow. From Las Vegas. There are direct flights to Hawaii from Las Vegas. There's a huge Hawaiian population in Vegas. It is cheaper for me to go to Hawaii than it is to stay in the, on the strip for the same number of days without a flight considering. Without a flight. Wow. Because break that down for a second.
You could take Southwest right? the concept of entertainment is different from Hawaii to Vegas, right? So you do need to do something at night here. You're not staying in the room, right? So add the entertainment and all the eating and beverages.
(02:07):
And the room. 'cause you, especially if you wanna stay somewhere nice and for seven days, that's a long time in Vegas. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I say this all day. It's three nights max two nights better. Three nights. Yeah, three nights max. Two nights. They got, they have your Monday AF after four, oh we'll schedule, but you're right that, that's crazy to think that you could go enjoy a nice resort. Hawaii, not to fault, like with the huge rebound with revenge travel to this market after COVID. Once you start to hit certain ADRs, like what sort of publicly traded company is gonna tell the Wall Street that they're gonna have to come down on rate zero, right?
Yeah. So I mean it's shareholders are for right or wrong are a part of the revenue management profitability, so you know, that's why you start charging for parking and that's why you start adding in fees for X, y, Z personally as a consumer that they'll need to backtrack off of that.
But unraveling that machine is gonna be super difficult for some of these companies, but it always bounces back Daniel. It always you've we've seen it. Sure. It will come back and it always happens. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if our inflation periods inflation recession periods in the past are like this.
There were never tariff wars or the discussion of them it'll take a little bit longer to come back, but I don't know. Prime days is now gonna be four days versus two. They're gonna give you more time to buy whatever. I don't I don't know.
I don't have a crystal ball. And I'm a consumer just like you are, so I I wish everything was way more affordable. Don't we all, don't we all? Hey man, thank you for making a little bit of time to have this walk down memory lane, but also give your insights on ticketing as well as event travel and Las Vegas of course.
So hopefully we could do it again soon or I can jump on your pod and we can anytime continue the conversation. But thanks Daniel. I really appreciate it. Alright, wonderful.
welcome to tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences.
(00:01):
I'm your host, Mario Bwin, and on today's pod we have Daniel Watan. Welcome to the pod. Good morning, Mario. I, it in reverse. I'm usually the one interviewing, so it's Oh, that. Okay. So I can see why this might be a little awkward. But also this is a conversation that's long overdue, man.
We've known each other. Oh yeah. We've known each other for. I dare say, shouldn't we say a long time? , I think one way to, to start this off. Yeah. It's gotta be like 25 years. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We were babies when we were we, yeah, because it's 2000. Yeah. So I probably started, I started what, April of 2001, I think.
Oh, nice. Oh, nice. And you were there before, it was August 99, right? So August 99. All right. So what we have to talk about is one, yes, we've known each other a long time, but where we started, because I like to say, Hey I'm a one of the old school. Travel scape, Expedia, guys who were one of the first team members, I would say it was probably like 15, 20 of us who did the initial contracting for hotels.
And my story always goes, Daniel, like I was the guy who would just sit in the hotel lobby and say, I'm gonna put your hotel on the internet. We're gonna make millions of dollars. And they would say, shut up kid. Get outta here. Luckily that all worked out. But you have even more of a, I think a story because you started out at not travel scape.
But at LVRS, I was hired originally by LVRS and for everyone. That's Las Vegas reservation system, which That's right. Was the primary business of the soon to become. Fully branded travel scape, and people are like, what's travel scape? Is that like Netscape Travel or what? What is that? But yeah. Yeah. So Mario, when I was hired, I got hired at a company where I was like, internet travel.
What's that? Yeah. Yeah. But tell me about that. Was it, so you had Tim and Tom who were the original founders of Travel Ski, right? Or LVRS. The story goes that they were, where they go to San Diego State or something, and they had a business where they would buy ads for people who would come to Las Vegas.
And so they just started getting inventory at their friends' hotels before that. Tim, I think it's Tim. Tim actually. Worked at, I'm gonna, Tim, if you're watching us, I hopefully if you watch hit me up. Number one, call me number two. He was working valet at Palace Station. Okay. And and they went to school with the Titas, right?
They were friends with the Titas? Yes. They were all part of the involved in the. For T and for those that don't know, they were the original owners of station casinos. Every single night was about like trying to pull people in for walk-ins, right?
So Tim just got hey, there's distressed inventory. And and he built a, like a peg board which was a which by the way was in a storage closet when we were back at Expedia was, so we Wow that that historical item is owned by Expedia brand right now, or eeg. So yeah he's I guess he said, Hey I can do this.
Better or what have you. And so they said, prove it. And so he started working on it, and that morphed into this business model that became Las Vegas reservation systems and at the time it was all call center, right? So it was calling for room inventory from the Las Vegas properties every single day.
We'll get into what the, what's changed with the technology. And then and then there was no online. When they started that, right? Yeah. And so then they launched the sort of first version of Las Vegas reservation systems, what they thought perfected it, got it. Running, making money, and then said, oh there's other destinations outside of Las Vegas.
We should open this up. That was when I was hired, was the. We're opening up to the, so the rest of the United States. You were the first New York City market manager. I was the second New York City market manager. Oh, shout out to who, who was the first, first, the first name? Her name was Jamie Pane.
Oh. She went on at the time, she went on maternity leave and I came in because I ran. All the rest of the it was New York right? And then it was the entire, like half of the United States. Yep. And so they're like, Hey, you know what you're doing? Come in and run New York. And it's so funny, dude.
I. I hadn't thought of Jamie Paone until you said that. And then a picture of her just popped into my brain Yes. Of, because when she came back from attorney, she was doing some of the training and stuff. Yeah. But I didn't realize she was the first contractor. That's funny. She was the first for New York.
Yeah. When I started there were probably 700 listings on the travel scape side outside of Vegas. And then within a year, I personally probably onboarded 2000. It sounds about right. Properties. Yep. And so you get really good at negotiating when you're getting told no at every single first conversation.
And this is when we started we used us as a comparison point against that horrible company at the time. hotels.com no. It wasn't hotels.com Daniel. It was yeah, it was what was it? Hotel Reservations Network also as HRN. Yeah, because you were early days of the battle. So was I though in Miami and shout out to se Beltran, like she and I would meet each other in a lobby and the hotel would be like, oops, we double booked them.
And it was like this really awkward sort of Crips and bloods type of gag. Situation where like any weapons yeah. So yeah it was that, and HRN they vary their commissions. They're holding you hostage on room blocks and we had just one. One commission model.
Yeah. That was the difference, right? Is that travel scape allowed the hotels to raise the rate and we had that sort of variable margin. So we would encourage them to do it because we'd make more money. The problem be became that. HRN would just, they would raise their margin, but they wouldn't allow them to raise the net rate.
Yeah, exactly right. So they were getting cheated. In their eyes. It was a traditional wholesale model. Look, I bought your rooms. And I own them, so let me put them out and I can charge whatever I want based on demand versus it was more of a partnership on the travel scape side where we were, Hey, we're gonna flex with you, we're still gonna make our 25, 30%.
Yeah. Whether it goes up or down. But at the end of the day, we were, and I say this to a lot of people too, that we were probably that wave of contractors who were training a reservations manager to become a revenue manager. I would say that revenue management fundamentals, including parity, did not exist.
And if they did, it'd be like 5% of current, right? So there were no revenue management systems. It was all here your experience, right? Yeah. And and the models were as you described, the models were very different, so in order to keep your commission slash margin down with HR end, you had to throw more rooms in.
(00:22):
You had to maintain that 10 block. If not, they were gonna take 45% commission, 50% commission, what have you. We being HRN could truly revenue manage or commission manage. And that's what we did on the travel scape side. We I think the statute of limitations has been long enough. We owned inventory a, KA, we had contracted inventory that we had to pay for. We didn't really own, it took risk but but I had to revenue manage that inventory. And it was like, we gotta sell 10 more rooms. What are we gonna drop it $5?
And yeah, no, I think 50% of my job at that time, you remember managing three properties. Anyway. That, yeah, we, I mean there's so many places we could go in terms of, but I think that's the other piece that people probably don't understand is that back then, 20 years ago, we did everything.
We would go contract the hotel, we'd load the hotel into the system. Yeah. We'd gather all the content, all the photos and then we would manage it. And even from a market perspective, we manage the sort order, which is now like this thing where people are like. Oh, it's all automated and just based on personalization.
It's automated, right? But back then it was like I, it was like day trading. I could call a hotel and be like, Hey, can you drop your rate by X amount? And then I'll pop you up to the top of the sword order. Once the inventory goes, you drop off and I'll find another one. And like you're basically. Doing deals the entire time.
In very short stints, because we have the data. We knew when the demand was coming in and we can get ahead of it depending on who gave us more inventory. I have to tell you, this is a Mario Daniel moment, I'm on a, I'm on a call and it's a, it's an abrasive call, right? And I am like, okay. Hey can you refresh your screen?
'cause they're in our sort order. Can you refresh your screen? On the other end? What happened to me, I go, if you don't gimme that rate, that's just what happened. And they're like, literally. Pushed them down. You just like them. I got Mario's because the partners in Florida were nicer, right?
He's Ooh, you're vicious. I was like, that. Those days were fun, man. We had a lot of power and, but I don't think we, we understood that we had the power, at least, no, at the beginning. We definitely used the tools and we had things were way faster than so that you could do certain activities like that.
I don't think there's any online. A company today that has doesn't have some like super complex algorithm that's running their running their sort of, or what have you. Yeah. And the personalization, depending on where that IP address is or what destination there.
Yeah. There, there's what you on. Yeah. But back then it was just like one set of demand coming in. I think we're doing limited. Google ad buying, right? Like it wasn't, there was no Google, it's like there was no Google, a OL Yahoo. It was Yahoo. Yeah. And we became popular very quick with certain hotels.
Yeah. I think we did. We did. Yeah. So when you when did you real cause you were at Expedia for a long time. You were there for 15 years. 22. 22 years. That's like being in the military or something, man, at the end it felt like it a little I'm sure at my pension. But you've seen my dad was in the military for 22, 23 years.
But it, to be at a company for 22 years you've seen everything Yeah. In online travel, right? Yeah. There's nothing but stories now and remember the time. But how did your role evolve over those days, those early days to, yeah. I think originally I was hired as a product manager.
If that's what we did, we managed onboarding product. Product meaning hotels. Yeah. Bring on as much as possible. It wasn't like now what product management is all associated with technology and technology and enhancements, And so that changed very quickly into un no, we manage markets 'cause.
Once we had a certain product breadth, then we're managing actual markets. And you can't jump from St. Louis to New York. You need to understand New York City versus St. Louis. And and I mario will tell you, I was fast and furious. I was, there was nothing stopping me.
I had a lot of energy and I got to that senior role pretty quickly because I was a part of the I'll call myself a product manager insofar as we developed a system called. A hotel inventory management system. Hims the original. Oh me and an industry powerhouse, Carrie Ter, we're a part of that subject matter experts.
'cause I had New York, so I had to be a part of it. Cause that's why shout out to Carrie who hired me for the management came from New York City. So That's right. Everything in hotels starts in New York City, then it goes to Las Vegas and then Yeah. The rest of the world. Yeah. Yeah. So we we helped the Expedia team understand merchant, the merchant business.
Because they came from Microsoft and they were all about travel guides. And the original Expedia was like on a CD rom. CD rom, it was a travel guide, like an electronic travel guide. Get away from those, was it Atla? Who does those? Those, oh, you were, yeah. It was like an encyclopedia, like a CD Rom or a Atlas or that, that was the travel guide.
So yeah, so we educated them on that. Got through all those sort of revenue management fundamentals that we knew from Carrie's experience was Caribbean, Las Vegas, Florida mine was. All the corporate destinations, New York City, et cetera. So we got them to build our first version.
It launched it launched we launched it. The middle of August of 2021, 2001, sorry, 2021. I processed the first extranet change 'cause we had an extranet that hotel suppliers could go on and actually interact with. It triggered a note to me and I processed it on August 25th, 2001. And then three weeks later, nine 11 happened.
Oh boy. Yeah, no, so I remember this vividly because up until that point we were faxing. Oh yeah. Sell and report. Yeah. And the extranet or HIMSS was like this monumental step forward. Yeah. And then we became trainers of it to get We were signing people up left and yeah. Try to get them involved. New York luckily was our beta destination, and there were more users on the extranet say good. Probably 50 users. Cause it's weird, hotel systems at the time were locked out of the internet. They weren't connected.
It's amazing to think about. Which then, you know, especially in online, when you look at online travel over the last 20, 30 years, there's been a couple of different waves and I think the first initial wave was really nine 11, where you and I lived through, through that as, and there's so many associated stories because after nine 11, that was really the rise of online travel.
Oh. Because that's when the hotels were like. This is a lot easier to manage. We're going to be able to put our inventory here and it just disappears, right? Like it gets sold and they get hooked on it If they have the right type of introductory offer Yes. Or something that happens, so that it, it goes from nine 11 and then I would say 2008.
(00:43):
The sort of economic issues that were happening. Lehman Brothers, yes. And then you see this kind of born out of it as like flash sale sites, right? Yeah, the jet setters, the Groupons, the living socials. And then there's this other shift in online travel few years. Close. Close user groups, right?
Close user groups, and then there's another one with I guess like attractions and ticketing and add-ons in that way. So I feel like the next one is event travel, like around live events. And you've had a little bit of experience with ticketing as well. I think that's where we started reconnect
but over this course, this time, especially during that time of nine 11, what do you think? Change the behavior of not just the industry, but like how the hotels saw the internet. If you think of those two specific periods in addition to COVID this sort of. Duress, that's pressure that's put down on the industry.
And usually they have to lay a lot of people off, right? So not only is it duress, there's pressure in the market, but you have a very small group of individuals that are having to do the same work, and so that's that the, I would say, so it's about efficiency. Nine 11 for the first six months prompted a lot, like 20% of the workforce just got cho,
so really it was like everything that had to do with automated, and this is throughout the last 25 years, every time we hit a another hurdle in automation or another hurdle in revenue management automation, or another hurdle in ai. Involved in it's duress, something hits the market. We have less people and we have to solve for things automatically.
I would say one of the things that prompted folks to go online is the phone lines went down. Which was strange because the internet was up. So the revenue manager could not call me, but could email me and or jump on the extranet and strip out inventory. Or what was happening during that time period?
Remember when the all the planes were grounded? When that happened. Yeah. And I remember all of the. Airport hotels in Florida, not all of them, but a good portion of them started to pull all of their inventory out so that they could raise the rates very high. And I remember all of us sitting in the pit kind of sitting there going do we allow this to happen?
This is complete price gouging. But it was this moment in time where you started to figure out like who was a good person, who was a bad person, and. It really was this technology that allowed us to be able to view it because we were behind the scenes. We saw a news report. 'cause even then it was a little bit slower to get out, but we knew personally, like the person who was like, you know what I don't care you guys.
You can oversell me or whatever, but I'm not gonna honor your reservations. I'm gonna get $2,000 tonight on that one room. Yes. And so it was a very interesting time. As to these type of stories. But I think what we're getting at is that when something big like that happens, travel in of itself and technology is very resilient and it creates these efficiencies with people at hotels or people at distributors like that.
And so I did you see the same thing? Because I wasn't really around in, in that mode around COVID, but how do you think COVID affected everything? COVID we shut Las Vegas off oh, who, like the strip closed. That did not happen during nine 11. And that's what 5,000 planes grounded in less than two hours.
I would say that every single time. There is a huge uplift in travel. Now, it may not be at the rates that everyone wants them to be. But the amount of travel that it's the revenge travel part of this. Like you can't keep the humans locked up for two years and expect that they're not gonna spend every last red scent that they've saved and or the money that they don't have and go travel.
So I think you're gonna see 9 11, 6 months after nine 11 we had a stellar year, but. We were in that super growth mode. So what did we have to compare it with? But the hotel industry rebounded really quickly. And then economic. That takes a little longer, but still I would say 2010, stellar year.
11 stellar, 12 stellar being a part of that was pretty phenomenal. And that's when all the, Hey, we can get more, or, wow, there's revenue management here. We don't have to set one rate for a season. We can actually now vary our rates. Weekend midweek. We can vary our rates by occupancy and what have you by hour.
This the systems got better, right? And they had these revenue folks had access to this and they could make more informed decisions 25 years ago there were not really, and. It was all here. Hey, we're not gonna get any more than $29 rate at Palace Station or wherever it was.
it's interesting that you also have a little bit of ticketing in your background. Oh, yeah. working@atvegas.com and knowing the Las Vegas market, I'm chuckling when you're talking about nine 11 victims. We lived there during nine 11. Yeah. I remember going to Mandalay Bay and hanging out, going to Rum Jungle or whatever it was, and just being empty and going like where is everybody?
Oh yeah. There are no flights coming in. On the ticketing side or the or that when you were at. At vegas.com, did you see the same kind of principles from revenue management and hotels to ticketing? Did you see anything? Yeah, I wouldn't say what's interesting about my career that at various points I've had to actually relearn.
Learning ticketing is a vastly different type of business. Mostly because it is like hotel 20 years ago. Yes. Exactly. And they're only getting better. They're better now at revenue management, but a lot of the systems that they're using are structured like hotel systems were 20 years ago.
It's not revenue management, it's called. Dynamic pricing di Dynamic pricing. Yes. Dynamic pricing. That's really just manual intervention. May have changed in the last year, just the way that ticketing is and it's all distressed inventory.
If you don't sell that ticket for the same day and then it's not, it's it's just an empty seat. Yep. I I would say for a business. That didn't really need to do revenue management. Now they're finding that there is a lot of benefit to that. And so I think what's great about the ticketing industry is they don't have to necessarily learn it Like the hotel industry had to learn it.
They'll adopt fundamentals. I would say quickly because the technologies will just be available once, once the technologists can build out revenue management platforms, , that support all sort hundreds and hundreds of different ticketing platforms. Then there they're gonna get there a lot faster. The hotel industry. I think you're right. It's interesting because it is fragmented from ticketing systems the same way a PMS or a CRS system would be except in the hotel side, you don't have one big monster who kind of controls the supply and the demand in terms of Ticketmaster.
And so that's a little bit of a complexity, I think if you're going to have a platform that manages. Dynamic pricing throughout all these different primary systems. Yes. It's, it, you still gotta get past those guys And I feel like they're making strides. If you go to try to buy your Coldplay tickets you're subjected to dynamic pricing.
(01:04):
I think a topic that comes up here quite a bit, and it's because you have a revenue management background and some ticketing, the difference being is that hotels. Understand the available inventory. So you can see the prices change and it's 365 days a year versus you have one Beyonce show and you don't know how many available tickets there are.
All you know is that once you hit refresh the price changes. And so there's all this kind of discussion around how, how they should be priced, when at the end of the day there's just a ton of demand coming in over this one particular date. Yeah. To manage. I would say there's a level of complexity also being added that it's not true in the hotel space.
And that is you have a bunch of AI bots that are buying this inventory. So it gets gobbled up, and it gets gobbled up quickly and there's not a human being involved in it necessarily. But the human being is I could, you name an artist, I can't get in. There's no way. To, yep.
Get these tickets and it's revenue managing, and so all this inventory ends up going out on the secondary markets in the future. So there's like a whole secondary. Level of business involved in this, that's not true in the hotel industry, right? That's right. There's no resell hotel.
The secondary business in hotel is Airbnb verbal or it's or you go to another hotel. Yeah. You there's another ho there's not another Beyonce playing in the city. Yeah. That, no that's a good. It's related. It's similar, but definitely different because there's more available inventory at different levels of rates on the hotel side Yeah.
Versus one venue. Yeah. I personally think that in order for, and I'm a disruptor, right? So I think this is two ticket master and access, like they should launch studies about how much inventory gets gobbled up by secondary market. And be open. Is this something that this uncovers everything, right?
Is it the artist probably doesn't care. I'm not saying that Beyonce as a team, right? But they make money depending on how they've negotiated the contract with Ticketmaster on the number of times the tickets gets sold. And so they're they being, some of these folks are probably okay with a ticket turning hands twice.
Because they make a percentage off of that. And so I think it's very complex. Yeah. You don't know how many the artists and the promoter have actually held back for themselves. So let's say they have an Amex deal for their fan club. Yeah. So there's a percentage there, which Amex probably cuts some, a nice check for several million dollars to get the rights to do that.
You have, yes. The resellers, to your point, they will. Gobble 'em up and then put 'em on the secondary market. Then you have this complexity of a fan who can't take out their entire day to go and sit online to buy on the primary. Especially with music touring sport's, a little bit different,
You're always gonna have some type of ticket pricing because there's just more opportunity. But if it's that one tour and fans are trying to get in. A lot of them, they just don't have the time. And so a lot of them have said, Hey, you know what? I'll just wait for it to get to a secondary market, and that's the service they're providing to me.
I think the transparency is one, the artists and the promoter are not really saying how many they've held back to, dictates what the pricing will look like. Yeah. And then on top of that, the. The secondary markets they, Ticketmaster in particular wants to cap the secondary market, but I think that is just like creating like a hotel, getting direct business,
No one else can sell it or you get your capped at $2 or whatever it is. But we're gonna raise the primary ticket pricing and make everybody come to me. So I see both sides. It's really interesting, and I always liken it back to what we were talking about from a hotel revenue management standpoint, that it's different, but similar because revenue management on the hotel side, they're always looking at available inventory based on occupancy.
By day or by night but the user I don't know what Bellagio's occupancy is for August 17th. Okay. But at any given time, you can see what the. Public occupancy is for that we're picking up Beyonce for that Beyonce show on August 17th. She has it coming to her man, no, they, Kevin Carter, but I don't think people know, like they, maybe they at launch they only released 5,000 tickets and they it's right. The map is whatever they say the map is. And so that's what I'm getting at is like, where's the real transparency? And then two weeks later they do a re repricing refresh 'cause it'll take them two weeks to change the pricing.
Yeah. 'cause they'll hold back tickets and then they release another 5,000. And the map says they're sold out. But are they sold out? Who know? You know what so you don't actually know Daniel. That's my point. It's like I see both sides. I understand why ticket master wants this and they wanna be artist first.
Only, but I also thing seller side. How maps are managed was very important to me when I was@vegas.com. Cause we wanted inventory parody and just hey, what kind of access to what seats, et cetera. So we, yeah, I spent a lot of time looking at it and when I go to try and buy a Lady Gaga ticket on the day, and the entire map says that it's on the secondary market.
First, as a consumer, I'm pissed because I want that Lady Gaga ticket that I was trying to buy. Second I don't know if the impossibility of it is to just seems a little a little strange to me I, it's because if it's not available and it's on a secondary market, which secondary market.
It, yeah. It's because Ticketmaster has a second secondary market, where they can revenue manage. Exactly. So that's what I mean it's a very, it's a very complex Yeah. Topic. But it, because I'm like, people like us are interested in it because we saw, I know, you know what, I think I without being subversive, I think there's just a lot of what the ticketing industry has done has shield like, to some extent they're way more public with information.
And I think that's why folks are really curious as to how a ticket price is a ticket price that's different than the hotel industry, and then vice versa. There's a lot of stuff that shielded that not a lot of people understand. No, I, and this is why we try to, I think they're not gonna follow the same tracks.
I think ticketing has enough uniqueness where they're gonna. They're gonna resolve some of their revenue management and make dynamic even more dynamic. I also think there's just a fundamental difference in that hotels are based on seasonality, demand versus the actual demand of a fan base.
Yes. Lady Gaga. It could be in the middle of winter in New York City, she's still gonna sell the place out. It's still out. And so that, that's the, the why this is a passion project of talking about this stuff is because I think live events in general, it's always been this way, but there hasn't been a huge spotlight on it until Taylor Swift, that live event can drive so much demand where wherever it might be.
And so if we are, could go to Lady Gaga and say, Hey, do you wanna make. Yeah. The most money on your packages, hotel packages, do it in New York City in the first two weeks of January. Like it, no one is there. It's freezing cold. And you are gonna get the biggest margin on any of this. I know, but if it's Taylor Swift, it's Wednesday at midnight, she could still sell that stadium out.
(01:25):
Exactly. And not even blink an eye doing it. But from a business perspective, like people like you and I It doesn't even take much analysis, right? Like we understand the seasonality of a certain market. We understand what capacity looks like in terms of hotel supply around it. You couple that with Madison Square Garden, available seats, and you could still sell a bunch of packages and also create the demand.
And especially if you're doing touring touring, you can, you could pick out certain destinations that could get you bigger margins where. They need the help, essentially. On a shoulder on a low season. And that's some of the conversations that I have, not just on the podcast, but just as a consultant, is really trying to strategically figure out what the most bank for.
Because a lot of the things on the entertainment side, Daniel is driven by. Beyonce, right? She's I think I wanna be in Hawaii when everybody else is in Hawaii because it's cold elsewhere. You're like, ah, you're actually putting a lot of strain by entering a high demand show into an already busy market.
Yeah. And so just like having a quick conversation for us for a fee we could help them understand what the best, Hey, don't platform your whole entire tour based on what you want. Exactly. Yeah. That's pretty much it. You wanna tell the story that you were a business building in all of these destinations?
Let's flip it. Exactly. It would take, it wouldn't take that much for you to do a full analysis and say, Hey this is a preferred or recommended routing. Oh yeah, you can, you could totally do that. And then at the same time, talk to every other theater in those markets about taking that day off.
Or hosting adjacent parties. Yes. To drum up demand because certain destinations are doing this, right? Like I had some guests on where they went to Scotland to cease Taylor Swift. You were there, she had three shows over that course of the week. But they had put wrapped buses of Taylor Swift.
There were like coffee shops doing Taylor Promotions and whether you got into the venue or not. You still experienced the Taylor Swift vibe because you're walking throughout the destination and being able to do this. So that's also another message just to DMO and CBBs and tourism boards to be like, listen, you should, you're probably already talking to Live Nation or whoever else, but if you can get everybody on board, the entire the tide lifts all boats in that particular market because you're.
Piggyback riding on the demand that's coming into it, and I don't think enough. People in these industries understand that it's a systematic process. Yeah. Where people like you, and you and I could come in and be like, here's the plan and is this is how we manage around it, and here are the estimated margins and gross bookings or revenue that you can essentially make with this type of artist.
'cause the data is out there for, from a cold play down to a a red hot chili pepper, whatever it is, there's so much data on the type of demand and the type of sellouts that they do that you could see the effects of the impact in the travel markets. Or just restaurants and other things.
Yeah. I think when these like super performers, 'cause there's a, I mean there's a group of them now, right? Yeah. There's a lot to be said about them warning. A market that they're about to release., Las Vegas in particular you could have three. Big headliners in one week. And or when you're like not to pick on St. Louis, but they don't have a enough hotel inventory to support a large super performer, right? Yeah. So it ends up being the entire southern Illinois and that whole entire area radius, right?
Yeah. And they're I'm sorry. Some small town 20 miles away from the venue, that is still doable. Does not know that something just got released. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of revenue management. , There's some symbiosis I think in these markets. Yeah. Where hey, this is gonna happen.
And so some folks get ahead of it really quickly and then they gouge. Which is not what I'm suggesting. No, but they do it. They should do it in a revenue management fashion, right? Like yeah. Build up the base and then yeah. Because that's what's happening, is that you hear the announce because they don't communicate it.
So I think there's like maybe a gap there, right? Where you could get any of these entertainment companies, whether it be the World Cup or Live Nation or whoever. Yeah. Yeah. Could hire a guy like you to say, I'm gonna communicate this before it hits out. Yeah. Into the markets to manage this in such a way where, yeah, one it's almost a PR role, right?
To consultant will be like, I will tell everyone something is being announced tomorrow on these dates. Be prepared for that. Be prepared. And this is how we suggest you prepare. I'll sign whatever NDA that you want. I will not name the name. No, but I think it's important to, because you and I are very unique in that we have that ticketing and travel Yeah.
Background and there aren't a lot of people who do. . As you look at event travel is what they're coining it. Like where do you see it changing? You saw a bit through the transition of vegas.com and vivid seats and obviously vegas.com is probably a perfect example.
This works because you're contracting hotels, you're contracting tickets for shows. Yes. And you probably have an idea. There's unique shows that come in into play as well. . I would say that that the more unique the experience, the more successful it's going to be, right? And think of this is my story for the rest of my life.
So at 16, I went to Taylor Swift. I didn't, I did not. At 16, I went to Motley Crue. That was pretty big deal. Yeah. Love to see that show. What? I would love to see the show at that time. I can't even tell the story of the show because it has a parental rating. Oh, okay. I'll tell you later. Yeah. Off, off topic.
Yeah. 16. So it's gonna be wildly. I like the Taylor Swifts, the Beyonces, the Benson Boones, Sabrina Carpenters, all of these Super Lady Gaga. They're, that is gonna continue so they're big, they're huge events. It's where a human being can be very human and record the whole thing, right?
Then they have the memory for the rest of their lives. I think I think if you are an up and coming theater production. Something new I something that someone can experience for the first time it's gonna be it's gonna be popular, I think those shows that have been around a long time, that may have movies after them and there's some other sort of format that folks could experience it in, I think they're gonna suffer a bit.
As far as the event travel, if it's in a location. I'm a American and it happens to be in Brazil. Yes. I'm gonna be part of that 2.5 million people that are gonna have the largest concert on the planet ever. You're talking about Lady Gaga, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah. There's no way that 700 square miles of that continent could not support that number of people.
But I think those who would've thought a 2.5 million person event? Would be successful. It was free, right? It was free. It was free, yeah. But it was, there was no there wasn't any issues with it. I don't know. Like I think that's gonna continue for sure. And I think I think good for the artists that they're gonna a lot of these tours are international.
(01:46):
So I think as long as borders are the way they are you can experience anything anywhere. And so I think you're gonna see a lot of folks. Move around the planet in order to go see what they wanna see. I would say a large number of later teen, early twenties folks that I know, they all went to Europe to go see.
Of these artists versus we live in Las Vegas, the entertainment capital of the world. They didn't see them here. They went to Provance or wherever. Those experience elsewhere. And these are huge this is five, six grand that they're spending on these vacations.
This is not this isn't like backpacking through Europe. Per person. Yeah. Per person. They're doing it right. And I'm like. That's wild. That's a whole different mental I think it, it is just a different approach to how they experience these things than, yeah. There's no way. I was at 22, dropping three grand to fly to London. To see Michael Jackson. Now, I probably should have, but there's no way I would've done that. That's not yeah. That it didn't even like, who's doing that? You're exactly right. That's one thing.
When I worked at Paul and we were doing destination festivals. We had a ton of data. We had a lot of consultants, Bain, McKinsey consultants who worked with us. And after you do the surveys because of what's going on in the world inflation housing prices are really expensive now.
So those people in their twenties, the Gen Z millennial they're not trying to save money. They're trying to have experiences. And they will invest in them because also you overlap that with social media and you can make money through social media if you have these very unique, aspirational experiences.
That's been a huge shift. And that was. Confirmed So I think you're right. I think that the attitudes have just shifted and event travels here to stay. And actually I think it's going to grow at various levels. And you live in the perfect place, right? Like you, you can see everything from Lady Gaga to the F1 now to Usher's residency or Wu Tang's residency.
You get to see a lot of it. So I also consider you one of my. Las Vegas experts because I think that was a good chunk of your Expedia life too, was managing Las Vegas, if I remember correctly. Yeah. And so just just to bring it all together as the entertainment capital of the world, as you mentioned, which I believe you.
What's going on right now in Las Vegas? What's, have you seen the numbers drop? Is there a sentiment, there's all this stuff on social media that it's empty and all this and that, which I don't really believe, but what's your take on Las Vegas? You can believe it.
You can believe it. I would say that Vegas is an international destination, so every time in the last 25 years that something has impacted international travel. And that could just be what you mean, like tariffs and Yeah, and immigration law. Exactly. Okay, gotcha. Without getting too political, but there's been some political moments throughout the last 25 years.
Vegas takes a hit. I would also call Vegas a precursor to other hospitality erosions. And Vegas usually happens because it's fully leisure, Then New York gets impacted dc, San Francisco, et cetera. So I would say that we're in that precursor mode. The summer tends to be much more of an in there's more international travel during the summer than there is at various other times of the year.
And so we're just seeing the impact of it. And when you have a whole entire country that doesn't want to become the 51st state yeah. I don't think people realize how much Canadian business this is. Hey, this is the heyday launchpad for a lot of Canadians and they're not really coming right.
So I would say, yeah, we're feeling it here. But then there's so much entertainment and it is ne neat. I'm gonna call Country Niche, but it's not very popular, Kenny Chesney sold out. It's just, the Wizard of Oz is coming to the sphere. That's gonna be cool for a lot of folks to re-experience The Wizard of Oz, so there's just a lot to do. But the summer was always soft in this market, and it's gonna be soft this year. Yeah. I think what I was, I don't think people realize how much Canadian business and Chinese business that comes to Las Vegas. Oh. Monthly. The re, you know what the reason why. A Canadian person in Toronto will decide today that they're coming to Las Vegas.
They can do it. There's direct flights. They will get on the flight. They will not have a hotel when they land. And then they will check in and they're considered a walk-in. 'cause it wasn't it wasn't necessarily a planned trip. They can stay 24 hours. Do whatever it is the Canadian's gonna do here and then get out of town and that's a real, that's a real thing.
And they'll do it on a random Wednesday. And so it's just and that there, there's a huge volume of that. We were doing studies at ex Expedia, and this was one of the weird facts that popped out of it, is you know who's who what demographic. Jumps on a plane last minute and comes to the city and it was Canadians over someone from la Everyone thinks LA oh, it's so close.
They'll just drive in. No, it was Canadians from Vancouver and Toronto. , Is there a percentage that you would see? Yeah, I can I could come up with a number. It was enough to be significant. For you to remember blast blasted you think 250 radius to 250 mile radius to Vegas.
Oh, that's all the last minute travel. Nope. It was Canadians. It was wild. No, I, there's been so much talk about and a lot of, so the other piece in Las Vegas that I see and what I've heard I've had a couple people challenge this on social media with me. It's just that it's too expensive now.
And that even Americans don't wanna go to Vegas because I guess Resorts world just pulled back parking. Now they've made it free again. But there's all these pieces of resort fees and parking and entry into clubs, table service. It's the GDP of a small country just to hang out with Tiesto or whatever it might be.
Do you feel like the pricing has also been a deterrent or as a, it's just compounded with all the other international market stuff? As a local, it would be a splurge for me to go to a day club, as a local. So even if I, Uber, that's 50 bucks. Everything's 50. Remember when it used to be five and $10 or $20 max or what have you this 4 99 steak and eggs, man when you lived here it was it's 50 $50 to park, it's $50 to get in.
It's $50 a drink round so it's just 50 50 50. These things add up. I'm just making up these numbers just to give everyone you're dropping. Yeah. In any given day, like. 500 to a grand so it is it is expensive. I've done personal analysis. Sometimes it is cheaper to go to Hawaii.
Wow. From Las Vegas. There are direct flights to Hawaii from Las Vegas. There's a huge Hawaiian population in Vegas. It is cheaper for me to go to Hawaii than it is to stay in the, on the strip for the same number of days without a flight considering. Without a flight. Wow. Because break that down for a second.
You could take Southwest right? the concept of entertainment is different from Hawaii to Vegas, right? So you do need to do something at night here. You're not staying in the room, right? So add the entertainment and all the eating and beverages.
(02:07):
And the room. 'cause you, especially if you wanna stay somewhere nice and for seven days, that's a long time in Vegas. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I say this all day. It's three nights max two nights better. Three nights. Yeah, three nights max. Two nights. They got, they have your Monday AF after four, oh we'll schedule, but you're right that, that's crazy to think that you could go enjoy a nice resort. Hawaii, not to fault, like with the huge rebound with revenge travel to this market after COVID. Once you start to hit certain ADRs, like what sort of publicly traded company is gonna tell the Wall Street that they're gonna have to come down on rate zero, right?
Yeah. So I mean it's shareholders are for right or wrong are a part of the revenue management profitability, so you know, that's why you start charging for parking and that's why you start adding in fees for X, y, Z personally as a consumer that they'll need to backtrack off of that.
But unraveling that machine is gonna be super difficult for some of these companies, but it always bounces back Daniel. It always you've we've seen it. Sure. It will come back and it always happens. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if our inflation periods inflation recession periods in the past are like this.
There were never tariff wars or the discussion of them it'll take a little bit longer to come back, but I don't know. Prime days is now gonna be four days versus two. They're gonna give you more time to buy whatever. I don't I don't know.
I don't have a crystal ball. And I'm a consumer just like you are, so I I wish everything was way more affordable. Don't we all, don't we all? Hey man, thank you for making a little bit of time to have this walk down memory lane, but also give your insights on ticketing as well as event travel and Las Vegas of course.
So hopefully we could do it again soon or I can jump on your pod and we can anytime continue the conversation. But thanks Daniel. I really appreciate it. Alright, wonderful.
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