SKIFT · 14 YEARS · AN ILLUSTRATED ESSAY Don’t Start a Travel Startup . DEMAND ENTERS HERE ▼The best advice I can give a travel startup founder, fourteen years into building Skift, is this: don’t start a travel startup. The biggest travel companies return 60 to 75% of free cash flow through buybacks. Skift’s Say-Do Gap compares what travel companies say about AI with what they are actually doing. LAYER 14 / 14 AI Changes Who Owns the Customer.