Running a Travel Company in the Age of Covid, with Lucy Lieberman

The Sydcast

Episode Summary:

Starting a job as a new CEO is not easy. Starting at the same time as a global pandemic is tougher. Now add in that the CEO – my guest, Lucy Lieberman – is running the travel company Tablet Hotels and you get the picture. With a career that went from digital startups in the early days of the Internet to managing global brands, Lucy has experience with pretty much every aspect of marketing, and she brings it all to her role as CEO. On this episode of The Sydcast, Lucy walks us through her path to the top, how she thinks about leadership, and some of the exciting new ideas she’s been spearheading to help emerge from the Covid crisis

Sydney Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.

Lucy Lieberman

Lucy Lieberman is CEO of Tablet Hotels, the hotel experts at the MICHELIN Guide. She joined Tablet as Chief Marketing Officer in 2019 to scale the brand globally following its acquisition by Michelin, bringing more than 20 years of expertise in marketing, product development and operations to the role. Lieberman previously spent 10 years with Ogilvy and Mather, most recently serving as Managing Director. At Ogilvy, she was responsible for delivering marketing ROI for brands such as InterContinental Hotels Group, American Express, IKEA and BlackRock. Earlier in her career, Lieberman served as a founding team member of two technology startups, oversaw product development for a mobile startup, and helped lead operations and project management for digital marketing agencies. She holds a BA from Georgetown University in Studio Art and French and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Insights from this Episode

• How Tablet Hotels work
• The difficulties of running a travel company during Covid-19
• How the partnership between Michelin and Tablet Hotels was formed
• Lucy’s journey to becoming the CEO of Tablet Hotels
• Lucy and Syd’s first experiences on business with the internet
• How the travel behavior has changed because of Covid-19

Quotes from the Show:

• “[About traveling] For quite a while now, my philosophy has been quite different, I’ll see what I see in terms of the famous places...but I much rather just kind of walk around and experience”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [4:41]
• “When you get any job offer you think about could I even do this, is this insane or is this completely common sense and there is not even anything to question about it ”- Lucy Lieberman in “The Sydcast” [15:07]
• “You can’t go out thinking that everything you’re going to do is going to be flawless and amazing and game-changing”- Lucy Lieberman in “The Sydcast” [42:05]
• “We definitely saw a real shift in where people were traveling away from metropolitan destinations and big hotels and people were really gravitating towards smaller properties, properties that had bungalows or cottages or stand alone units, villas, those were insanely high demand”- Lucy Lieberman in “The Sydcast” [50:38]
• “When I was growing up I was taught that business and capitalism were almost dirty, that the path in life needed to be more noble and more about education and the wellbeing of society in some ways”- Lucy Lieberman in “The Sydcast” [59:30]

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Sydney Finkelstein

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Lucy Lieberman

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Tablet Hotels

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.