Skift Take
Skift creator and CEO Rafat Ali’s high ranking as a prominent travel leader comes from his desire to deal with major problems– especially news and patterns– in the travel market.
Rashaad Jorden
Skift creator and CEO Rafat Ali is being recognized as one of travel’s most influential leaders for 2022 by CRANT, a digital marketing company. CRANT, which utilized a formula that included tracking leaders’ total number of social networks posts and their engagement level, ranked Ali second in its list, tracking just Carnival Cruise Line President Christine Duffy.
Ali produced eight posts that appeared in CRANT’s list of 100 most interesting by travel leaders, the highest ranked of which– number 18– praised Visit Iceland’s tourism campaign that poked fun at the metaverse. His December 2021 post on LinkedIn displaying the earliest mock-up of Skift’s homepage, published 10 years prior, was listed as CRANT’s top post for the month.
CRANT, which has actually tracked social networks posts by travel leaders since Might 2021 for its research, found that travel market news and patterns was the frequently discussed topic by leaders in addition to the one that brought in the highest levels of engagement. The vast bulk of Ali’s posts touched addressed issues referring to the subject.
Ali, who established Skift in 2012 as a genuinely distinct business-to-business publication covering the business of travel, began his career as a journalist, then as a blogger while creating his first business PaidContent. Ali has a large following across social networks for his sharp insights in addition to for his unflinching critiques.