Expedia's chief technology officer, Ramana Thumu, told Skift on a recent visit to its new Silicon Valley offices that the company spent nine months studying which engineers get outsized gains from AI coding tools — and found the top 2-10% are producing exponentially more. Now Expedia is recruiting aggressively to find more of them.

Since June, it's hired at least 10 engineers away from Amazon, Netflix, Google, and Meta. The bet: identify high-leverage engineers, give them unlimited AI tokens, and spread their methods across the company. Whether those engineers stay — so close to their former employers — is the open question.

Join the Skift Studio team on LinkedIn Live on July 22 at 2pm for an exclusive, actionable session where we break down the Skift Playbook for campaign success. We’ll move beyond the typical sales pitch and focus on how to build a measurable, full-year strategy that combines authority with direct access.

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AI is making it possible to connect media spend to visitation, traveler value, and economic impact before campaigns end.

For $7 a week, Skift gives you something the industry is missing – the full picture.

Ennismore is heading toward a $3.2 billion IPO at the bottom of its range because investors do not see a demand story beyond Accor.

In this clip from Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk break down why Airbnb is the missing piece, how a 55% hotel-to-homes rebooking rate makes the math work for both sides, and why Airbnb just bought its first-ever property in New York City, the one place in America where Airbnb is heavily restricted.

How are public travel companies performing around the world? The Skift Travel 200 pulls the data you need to understand global market movements. Paid subscribers get full access here.

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