Leadership Intelligence: Mapping the Busiest Year of CEO Turnover in Travel

Introducing a new quarterly report from Skift Exec Search tracking executive moves across travel, hospitality and adjacent sectors.

This first edition lands on the most concentrated stretch of CEO-level change this industry has seen in years: Bazin announcing his exit at Accor with a two-year runway, Choice Hotels losing its CEO days after a soft earnings call, Air Canada’s chief retiring eight days after a condolence video delivered in the wrong language, Priceline and Turkish Airlines both promoting their chief commercial officers to the top job, and IndiGo importing Willie Walsh from IATA to steady the world’s third-largest aviation market.

Our team’s experience has taught us that transitions cluster, and the clusters tell you more than any single move. Eight CEOs, four distinct patterns, which this report maps. 

Beyond the transition recap, this edition digs into:

• Why Kerzner filled its CCO seat from De Beers rather than from hospitality
• What separates a successful lifer hire from a failed one — Capuano and Nassetta on one side, Chapek and Linnartz on the other
• Four calls for Q3, including why Hilton’s next CTO hire will set the market rate for hospitality tech leadership

The report is free, produced from our own market monitoring, and shared as a service to the industry.