Bob Hohman was appointed president of Classic Custom Vacations
in March, about a year after Expedia acquired Classic. He was part
of the Microsoft team that created Expedia in 1996. Travel
Weekly.com's David Cogswell talked to Hohman when Hohman visited
New York in May to unveil Classic's Expedia for Agents
product.
Travel Weekly: You said that Expedia for Agents
is more about securing a loyal preferred-supplier base for Classic
than it is about selling more Expedia product through agents. Is
Classic a higher-margin product for you than Expedia?
Hohman: It's not that dramatic a difference.
But Classic is a luxury tour operator, and we do firmly believe in
the luxury travel space.
We also believe that travel agents have a key roll to play in
the luxury travel space. Travel agents will always have an
important role in Classic's distribution system. Travel agents will
flourish where they add value and they add a ton of value in the
luxury complex-vacation-package process and that's Classic's
business.
Travel Weekly: How did you wind up at
Expedia?
Hohman: I've been programming Cobol since I was
14 years old. I went to Stanford, got a couple of degrees in
computer science. I went to Microsoft in '93, worked on Windows 95,
worked on interactive television and wrote games. Then in 1996
Expedia came up.
In '96 the only way to book travel online was Eaasy Sabre, which
was on Prodigy and CompuServe. You clicked on the button, and they
dropped you off at basically a DOS prompt. They called it Eaasy
Sabre but it was not easy. It was basically Sabre. You had to type
cryptic long strings of what you wanted to do, but I think it was
called "easy" because you could always type in question mark-return
and it would give you some help. The help it gave you was like "You
need a comma in the fourth column."
I love travel, so the idea of making travel easy for people who
wanted to control the experience for themselves was attractive.
Travel Weekly: What did you do at Expedia?
Hohman: I helped build the hotel product and
the vacation package product. I helped run hotel business for a
while and the vacation package business for a while. We built our
hotel technology, but we also bought a company called Travelscape
in '99 or 2000. We built a hotel merchant platform, I assisted in
that. Once we had a hotel merchant platform, we realized we had all
the pieces for dynamic packaging, so the next logical step was to
build dynamic packaging, and I helped to do that.
So I have a long history in technology, and some time on the
business side of Expedia.
Travel Weekly: What are your plans for
Classic?
Hohman: Since I come from the Expedia
background, the goal was that I should learn the Classic business,
embrace it, love it -- which I do -- and be able to tap Expedia
resources as necessary to be able to drive that business.
One of our key initiatives is the agent booking engine, which
we'll roll out by the end of September. We'll be investing in more
technology. We'll be trying to more clearly define Classic as a
luxury tour operator and all that means. We want agents and
consumers to think of Classic when they think of a luxury trip.
We'll be making sure it's differentiated, stitching the components
together in a unique way.
Travel Weekly: How is your working relationship
with [chairman and former president] Ron Letterman structured?
Hohman: Ron and I have a great relationship,
it's really strong. Ron is focusing on some very important parts of
the company: building travel agent relationships; deepening
relationships with suppliers; and very importantly, continuing to
differentiate the Classic product. He is going into destinations
and trying to figure out what's truly going to create amazing
luxury, what is going to make the Classic product different, and
ultimately better, than any of our competitors.