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The media mogul touched on the impact of strong storytelling and how travel will always remain relevant at Travel + Leisure’s 2026 World’s Best Summit.
Media titan Barry Diller recently reflected on the power of storytelling and how it shapes every industry.
“Everything is about storytelling,” Diller told Travel + Leisure Editor-in-Chief Jacqui Gifford at the 2026 World’s Best Summit in New York City on July 14. “There is nothing if there is not a story behind it, if there is not a reason to be interested in something.”
Diller was the opening keynote speaker at the two-day event that has been playfully dubbed the “Super Bowl of Travel.” At the World’s Best Summit, CEOs, hoteliers, creatives, and more gather to discuss trending travel news.
The Chairman and Senior Executive of T+L’s parent company, People Incorporated, and Expedia Group, Diller is behind some of the most recognizable brands in media and technology. The billionaire businessman has spent over five decades shaping the entertainment industry during his tenures at ABC, Fox, and Paramount.
Diller and Gifford’s conversation also touched on recent zeitgeist moments that impacted the travel industry like the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, and The White Lotus.
Diller revealed a chat he and Gifford had a few months prior about the Emmy-winning HBO series. “You have this incredible magazine, gorgeous pictures, you know everything about every great place in the world, there’s nobody that knows it, covers it better,” Diller told Gifford. “How come five years ago you didn’t invent White Lotus?”
“And that’s totally right. Once again, ‘Super Bowl of realness,’ you’re right,” Gifford laughed. “I should have come up with it. I’m going to do it. Challenge accepted.”
“I think the interesting thing about that show is that it made everybody want to go to Thailand,” she added about its Southeast Asia–set third season. “And there are still those moments that happen. They are fewer, a little bit more fleeting, but they happen.”
Each season, The White Lotus successfully reshapes and inspires global travel—bookings to Thailand grew by 300% after the last season—showcasing the strong influence of entertainment on travel. Something Taylor Swift’s tour and the World Cup also had in common, Diller said, is that “people go to those cities to be around that and that is a really powerful thing.”
Gifford also touched on the “sense of community and meeting others in real life,” that these types of events foster.
“The amazing thing about the World Cup is, if you asked people four, five, six months ago, they would’ve said, ‘This is a disaster. They’ve overpriced it, it’s very hard to get to, nobody cares about it,’ et cetera,” Diller said. “And then once it started, week by week, the interest kept growing and growing. And by the final on Sunday, everybody’s going to be connected to it.”
While there is economic uncertainty in the age of AI, inflation, and labor shortages, Diller gave the audience a sense of hope about the travel industry and its resilience through even the most unpredictable times. He reflected on when he closed the deal to buy Expedia from Microsoft mere weeks before 9/11 and the subsequent sudden shutdown of travel worldwide. After the attacks, there was a clause that allowed for him to back out of the deal, but Diller decided against it, after a colleague offered him a piece of advice that has stayed with him all these years later. Instantly after hearing that his uncertainty around the company subsided.
“Someone in the room said, ‘If there’s life, there’s travel.’ And I said, ‘Done. We’re closing,’” Diller said. “And so we bought it. And of course, like it always did, and I think it always will until we’re in the final simulation, travel came back, booming, as it does.”
People Inc. is a wholly owned operating business and subsidiary of People Incorporated.
Read the original article on Travel & Leisure
