About Skift

Skift

Overview

Skift is a New York-based travel industry news and intelligence company. Founded in 2012, it operates as a hybrid business-to-business media company: a daily travel industry news site, a subscription research business, a producer of global conferences, and a branded-content studio. Skift provides news, market research and marketing services to the travel industry, covering airlines, hotels, resorts, destinations, online travel and travel startups. The name "Skift" — pronounced to rhyme with "shift" — comes from a Nordic word meaning "shift," "change" or "transformation," chosen by the founders to signal the ongoing transformation of the travel business. The company is privately held and headquartered in New York, New York. Its products include skift.com, Skift Research reports, the annual Skift Global Forum and other events, and SkiftX, its branded-content arm. Skift's revenue comes from three main sources: branded content, subscriptions, and its series of global events.

Founding by Rafat Ali and Jason Clampet

Skift was founded in July 2012 by Rafat Ali, who became chief executive officer, and Jason Clampet, formerly of Frommer's, who joined as head of product and later became editor-in-chief of Skift.com. Ali was already one of the best-known figures in digital media: he had founded paidContent, the first news site to cover the digital media ecosystem, in 2002, and sold paidContent and ContentNext to the Guardian in 2008 for a reported $30 million, continuing to lead the business until 2010. He then spent two years travelling the world, visiting 14 countries, and concluded that the travel industry — one of the largest industries and largest employers in the world — lacked a modern, digital-native business publication. Where older trade publications served the industry in print, Ali argued they had not figured out digital. Skift was conceived as a digital-native hybrid: part news publication, part data and reporting service, aimed both at travel industry professionals and at a wider audience interested in following the business of travel.

The Name and the Thesis

The choice of the name Skift embodied the company's editorial thesis. Travel, Ali argued, was being transformed by the convergence of hotels, transportation, technology services and startups — a convergence he had observed first-hand during his two years of travel. The Nordic word for "shift" or "transformation" captured the idea that the publication would chronicle an industry in flux: airline mergers, the rise of online travel agencies, the sharing economy's arrival in hospitality, changing consumer behaviour and the emergence of travel startups. The company's positioning as "the business of travel" distinguished it from consumer travel media focused on deals, destinations and reviews. Skift's pitch to its audience was that it would connect the dots across the subsectors of travel — airlines, hotels, destinations, tourism, online travel — and translate the industry for the larger world.

Early Funding

For its launch, Skift raised about $500,000 from angel investors including L. Gordon Crovitz, Craig Forman, Jim Friedlich, Tom Glocer, Vishal Gondal and Jason Hirschhorn. In May 2013, the company announced an additional $1.1 million in seed financing led by Lerer Ventures, bringing the total seed round to $1.5 million. The new round included participation from Advancit Capital, Ironfire Angel, Mesa+ and Growlab/LX Ventures, along with angels including Jason Calacanis, Michael Cunniff, Duncan Jennings, Sean Keener, Shakil Khan, Martin Nisenholtz, Paul Noglows and Michael Yavonditte. Ali said the funding would be used to double the company's staff from five to ten, hiring developers, audience-development, editorial and sales professionals, building out its sales infrastructure and developing its data services — including the SkiftSocial travel-brand index and two premium subscription products that were to roll out that summer. From the start, Ali insisted that the company needed diverse revenue streams: advertising would be one part, but data services and premium offerings were central to the plan.

Skift Research and the Subscription Business

Research is one of the three pillars of the Skift business. Skift Research produces subscription reports on the key trends, market estimates, forecasts and deep-dives of travel sectors and companies — from airline distribution and hotel development to the economics of short-term rentals and the behaviour of business travellers. The decision to charge for research at a time when most digital content was given away free was one of the company's defining bets. Clients including Marriott, Hilton, Expedia, Delta and United paid subscription fees for the reports, and the research business gave Skift a revenue stream independent of advertising cycles. The research operation also fed the newsroom: Skift's journalists and analysts worked from the same data, and the company's studies have been cited by The New York Times, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC and other major media organisations.

The Skift Global Forum and Events

Events form the third pillar of the business, alongside branded content and subscriptions. The flagship is the Skift Global Forum, held annually in New York, which convenes the chief executives and senior executives of the world's largest travel companies — airlines, hotel groups, online travel agencies, cruise lines and destination marketing organisations — for two days of interviews, panels and networking. The forum has become one of the most important gatherings on the travel industry calendar, and its on-stage interviews with travel CEOs generate some of Skift's most widely read coverage. The company runs additional events around the world under its own brands, extending the forum model to regional markets and specific sectors of the industry.

Branded Content and SkiftX

Branded content — marketing services and sponsored editorial produced for travel brands — is the third major revenue source, produced through the SkiftX studio. The model reflects Ali's conviction, stated at the company's founding, that media companies need diverse revenue streams and that advertising alone would not sustain a digital publication. SkiftX produces content marketing for destinations, hotel groups, airlines and technology vendors, leveraging the credibility of the Skift newsroom and the reach of its executive audience. The combination of branded content, subscriptions and events gave the company a diversified model that proved more resilient than the advertising-dependent models of many digital media startups of the same era.

The Pandemic Test

The COVID-19 pandemic was the severest test in Skift's history — and a demonstration of the resilience of its diversified model. The global tourism industry was devastated in 2020, with the United Nations estimating losses of as much as $1.2 trillion, and travel industry advertisers slashed their budgets. Skift, a B2B media company whose fortunes were tied to the industry it covered, was hit hard: the company had been on track to reach $18 million in revenue in 2020, with major advertisers including Accenture, Oracle and Accor, but saw annual revenues fall by 35 percent for the year. The company pivoted to virtual events, which accounted for about half of its revenue for much of 2020, with advertising contributing roughly another quarter and Skift Research subscriptions the remaining quarter. Ali acknowledged that 2020 was very hard, but the company survived — and its coverage of the industry's collapse and recovery, from airline bankruptcies to the return of leisure travel, became some of its most essential journalism.

Rafat Ali's Media Career

Skift's trajectory is inseparable from the career of its founder. Rafat Ali earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, India, and began his career as a journalist at Advertising and Marketing magazine in India before attending graduate school at Indiana University on a Knight Foundation Fellowship, earning a master's degree in journalism. After moving to New York City, he became managing editor of the Silicon Alley Reporter, where he wrote the Silicon Alley Daily email newsletter — the experience that sparked his interest in media brand building. He founded paidContent in 2002, sold it to the Guardian in 2008, and stayed until 2010. In 2012 he founded Skift, which Indiana University's Media School has described as the most influential media company in the global travel industry, producing daily news, research and conferences read by the industry's top chief executives. Ali's profile — born in the United Kingdom, raised in India, educated in the United States — mirrors the global industry Skift covers.

Coverage and Influence

Skift's newsroom covers the business of travel across its full scope: airlines and aviation, hotels and hospitality, destinations and tourism, online travel and distribution, cruises, meetings and events, travel technology and startups, and the macroeconomic and policy forces shaping the industry. Its journalists aim to be immersed in travel around the clock, and the company's hiring pitch has long asked candidates whether they are comfortable thinking about travel literally all day long. The publication's influence extends beyond its core executive readership: its research and reporting are cited by general-interest media worldwide, and its framing of industry trends — from the "experience economy" to the recovery of business travel — has shaped how the broader press covers tourism. For travel industry professionals, from airline executives to hotel developers to destination marketers, Skift has become the daily briefing on the business they work in. The official website is skift.com.