Full Video: Expedia Group Chairman Barry Diller at Skift Global Forum 2022

Barry Diller, the senior executive at both Expedia Group and IAC, thinks many Environmental, Social and Governance programs amount to "empty calories," remote work options have been foisted on corporations by a few California tech companies, and the mid-term elections in the U.S. could be a "grim" precursor to the Presidential vote in 2024.

Skift Editor-In-Chief Tom Lowry interviewed Diller on these and many other travel-related topics on stage at Skift Global Forum 2022 in Manhattan on September 20.

Diller said the several-year-old reorganization of Expedia Group has revolutionized the company, that the future of the casino hotel is bright, and airfares and hotel rates will have to get lower.

Watch the full video of the conversation and you can read the transcript, as well, below.

https://youtu.be/OfRvUtM_mGE

Barry Diller: What are you supposed to do with these? They look like you could eat them. Oh God. All right. Hello.

Tom Lowry: There's a price to pay for design forward, Barry.

Diller: Oh yeah, backwards.

Lowry: Welcome to Skift Global Forum.

Diller: Thank you.

Lowry: Great to see you again, in person this time.

Diller: Thank you. This is everybody.

Lowry: The last time we spoke was September of 2020. That was less than six months after the start of the pandemic. And you were quite adamant, at that time, about people returning to the office to work. If we were to go outside right now and go the 30 blocks down IAC's headquarters...

Diller: Wasteland.

Lowry: ... south of here, and we walk through the door, what would we see in IAC today?

Diller: You wouldn't see too many people. You'd see big open spaces with relatively few people in. First of all, the concept work from home is stupid when you think about it. This started, obviously, because of we were all shut in so nobody could go to work. But the idea that, and mostly done by the tech companies in California, which started this absurdity of three days, three and two, which is basically a four day weekend. There's actually been no real thinking about this. You can only do this in a granular way, which means if you've got a workforce of thousands of people, then there are relatively few that can genuinely do work outside of the office and only touch the office very occasionally. But, you really have got to do it granularly.