The Enterprise of the Future... in the travel industry

Based on interviews with more than 1,100 CEOs worldwide, the IBM Global CEO Study revealed five core traits of successful enterprises of the future. Here we explore the key implications for travel companies.¹

HUNGRY FOR CHANGE
Rising fuel costs. Inflation. Economic uncertainty. The constant vigil against security threats. It’s no wonder eight out of ten travel industry CEOs expect major changes for their organizations over the next three years. The question is: are they prepared to man age these shifts? This answer is critical since financial outperformers across industries reported more past success managing change than underperformers. We also found that while CEOs in other industries are struggling with talent shortages and accelerating techno logical change, these factors are much lower on the travel industry agenda. Is this be cause travel industry CEOs have these issues under control? Or could it be that they are not fully leveraging employee development and technology advances to help manage the challenges ahead?

Implications: Travel companies cannot allow the urgency of cost-cutting to overshadow the importance of long-term agility. Hertz is one business that has done both: the rental car company has boosted its profitability through ongoing process and technology change.2 Since risk and uncertainty are here to stay, travel CEOs must equip their companies with flexible processes and infrastructure that enable rapid change. They must turn organizations fa tigued by change into ones that are energized by it.

To read the full report, download the PDF file at the top of this page.

References
¹ We conducted 1,130 interviews with chief executives, general managers, business leaders and public-sector heads in the course of completing the research for our third biennial Global CEO Study. Here we focus on the responses of the 20 travel industry interviewees.