- 5 hours ago
How do you keep evolving when you already operate at global reach? In this conversation, Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking.com, reflects on the ever-evolving challenge of continued innovation, from building a global platform to navigating a new wave of AI-driven change. As technology reshapes how people discover, choose, and trust, where does competitive advantage come from and how will the company fuel growth for itself and across the wider economy?
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00:00So, if you're a market leader, the question is, how do you avoid getting comfortable?
00:04How do you keep reinventing yourselves when everyone else is also trying to catch up?
00:11I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
00:15Please do prepare to give a very warm welcome to the CEO of Booking.com, Glenn Fogel,
00:23in conversation with Amy Thompson, editor at Bloomberg.
00:48Hello. Hello.
00:52So excited to have Glenn Fogel here today.
00:54And you've often talked about how Booking is one of Europe's premier tech companies.
01:03And I wanted to talk to you about a vision that you've had about an AI travel agent,
01:10something that can recreate an old-fashioned experience, someone who knows your preferences,
01:16can help if your flight is delayed, if you need to rebook a restaurant.
01:21And Booking's been rolling out some of its own AI tools already.
01:27But can you walk us through how you see getting from where you are now to the vision?
01:33Well, sure.
01:34And thank you, Amy.
01:35And I'm so happy to be able to talk about this here.
01:39And it's great because so many of the people here traveled here.
01:43And, of course, I know a lot of them had frustrating travel because travel can be very frustrating.
01:49And I know everybody would like it to be better.
01:52And that's what we're working on doing and using AI to make it happen.
01:57So the vision that we are always pushing forward is this idea of using technology
02:04technology to make travel so much better, so much easier, so much seamless, frictionless.
02:12Really, it's something that I think everybody would like to know, well, why hasn't this happened yet?
02:17And, of course, part of the reason is the systems don't talk to each other.
02:20But another thing is it's just so complicated.
02:23And fortunately, with using AI, particularly now Gen AI, we're going to be able to create
02:31what we call the connected trip and truly make it a much, much better process from the beginning
02:37when you first start thinking about travel, your exploration, your discovery, your actual
02:43deciding what to do, then doing it.
02:46And while you're doing it, having in your pocket your phone is your personalized travel agent.
02:55That technology will be giving you great thoughts on what you should do, how you should do it,
03:00what to do next.
03:01And then, God forbid, anything goes wrong because in travel, we know things go wrong.
03:08Having one point of contact to be able to fix it all because travel is like dominoes.
03:14One thing goes wrong and then one goes wrong and another, another, another.
03:17But even more, the ultimate thing is using AI to be able to foresee, to predict.
03:24We all know AI is a prediction machine.
03:27Being able to predict the problems that are going to happen and taking actions beforehand
03:33so you don't actually experience that problem.
03:36That's what we want to accomplish.
03:38That's what we're working on.
03:40That's really interesting.
03:41So, right now, the most visible part of the strategy for consumers, I think it's fair
03:45to say, is Penny, your AI bot.
03:48So, what's the next big step?
03:50Is Penny ultimately going to be this travel agent of the future?
03:54And what's the next big step for her to get there?
03:57Yeah.
03:58So, we have a number of different companies.
04:02Booking Holdings has Booking.com, the name.
04:05It's pretty obvious.
04:05By far, the biggest company founded in Europe.
04:09It is, by far, the flagship, by far.
04:12And we have a lot of AI development.
04:15They are happening right now.
04:16We'll be bringing out new things in the not-so-distant future.
04:19What you mentioned is Priceline, another of our companies born in the States.
04:24They have an AI trip planning thing that is very good.
04:29It was chosen by one of the equity analysts who follows our industry as the best AI trip
04:35planning device.
04:36We have other things like Kayak.
04:38We have OpenTable.
04:40In Asia, a company called Agoda.
04:42But Booking.com, by far, is the biggest and the one that really is the one that, here in
04:48Europe, people know and love.
04:50So, what's the next step, then, to rolling these sorts of capabilities out across all of
04:57these brands across the company?
04:58So, one of the things I think we've all seen is how rapidly things are changing, developing
05:04new models, dropping all the time, new ways to use them.
05:09And from my belief as CEO is figure out, how can I make sure that we don't make a mistake
05:16in going down the wrong path or not taking advantage of something that doesn't look that
05:20interesting right now, but maybe a year from now or two years from now will be.
05:24And that's, so, what I do is I try and spread our bets.
05:28So, I mentioned all these companies that we have, and they are all developing different
05:33things.
05:34Yes, they communicate well.
05:36They share information.
05:37They share knowledge.
05:38They share what's working, what's not working.
05:41But what I'm not doing is coming in and saying, you have to all do this together because I want
05:47to have that diversification.
05:48In addition, we have two new things, two new startup-type operations that we are funding
05:54also within our corporate umbrella, but two entirely new.
05:58So, take it away from the longstanding companies where you have developed certain ways to do
06:04things.
06:04Look, we all know that companies are born, they grow, they develop a certain way to do
06:10it where it's hard to do something entirely different.
06:12So, I'll say, well, let's do it the easy way.
06:14Let's just start a new company from scratch.
06:16So, you pretend you're a startup, here's the money, do it just like you do as a startup.
06:21We're not going to do anything for you right now, just go and do.
06:24And we actually had the person who started Kayak, Steve Happner, he's leading one of them.
06:30He's been running Kayak for us for many, many years, but I said, stop doing this.
06:34Go back to the days when you started Kayak and do it just like that, only use AI to create
06:39a new thing.
06:40And we have another thing where another person's doing it in another location.
06:43So, trying to get as many new things in because nobody knows what's really going to be the
06:48winner down the road.
06:50So, what are their focuses?
06:52Is it something going beyond sort of the travel service agent chat bot?
06:56You know, what are their goals?
06:58It is so many exciting things, but of course, I'm not going to expose them here now.
07:02When they are ready for prime time, we, of course, will be releasing them out at that
07:06time.
07:06But I will say, I am excited about them.
07:09Okay.
07:09So, you can't tell us even sort of what part of the customer experience they're touching?
07:14Well, I could, but I won't.
07:16Well, maybe I'll put it another way.
07:18When you're thinking about what customers want from AI on your website, what do you think
07:25is the first thing that they're going to completely give over to AI?
07:30What's the first thing that they're going to trust with AI?
07:32Is it going to be booking a train ticket or, you know?
07:35This is what's so interesting.
07:36I mean, everybody here has already given up incredible amount of your trust to AI.
07:44Every single person who's ever flown, you are giving your life to AI.
07:49I assure you that a lot of the systems that are being run are AI.
07:54Now, it's not gen AI, but it is AI modeling.
07:57It's a lot.
07:57I mean, there's so many things in your life that you've already, for us though, we understand
08:02trust is so important.
08:04And one of the things we absolutely believe is that customers, even if we know what you
08:10want, it's still important that we give you, the customer, the opportunity to confirm or
08:18not that decision.
08:20That people, many people, they still want a thing called agency.
08:23They want the power to decide, even though all our models will say, I know you're going
08:29to buy that.
08:30They still want to be the person who, now sometimes I, myself, I know there'll be times like, look,
08:35I need a flight from Paris to London.
08:38Okay.
08:39Anyway, I want the AI so sophisticated, it knows before I know that I need the flight
08:45from Paris to London, knows what time, which airport I need to fly into for the meeting
08:50that I've got, sets up all the transportation.
08:53And I want it to be at a level that I trust it so much that that's all happening automatically
08:59without any human in the loop or on the loop.
09:03It's just done.
09:04And it just tells me where else it's going when, but I know most people will not be at
09:08that stage.
09:09And even more so our business, mostly leisure.
09:12If you've got a complex trip, you're a family of four, multiple destinations.
09:17I assure you the number of permutations, you are definitely going to be wanting to say yes
09:22or no to certain things.
09:23You are not going to want to let an algo make the decision for you.
09:28Now, is there a place as you're thinking about this where it's sort of an AI no-go zone?
09:34Somewhere where a human should definitely be making that decision, whether it's insurance
09:40or, you know, vetting vendors or something like that.
09:45Yeah, no, it's an incredibly interesting thing in all different industries.
09:49For travel, it's a little different because we don't deal with a lot of life and death type
09:55situations.
09:55So it becomes a little, if there's a mistake made, a horrible vacation, a horrible travel,
10:02that's bad.
10:04And I take incredible personal responsibility, especially for really important things.
10:09You're supposed to get there for a wedding, somebody's birth, graduations.
10:14I get it.
10:14That's really, really important.
10:15But it's not the same thing like AI making a mistake on a mammogram.
10:20That's a big issue.
10:21Oops, sorry, missed that tumor.
10:23Bad.
10:24So I think it depends on what level of do you need, what level do you need to make sure
10:31if something is not right, that you really would have wanted to have a human in the loop.
10:36Yeah.
10:37Who owns that mistake when the AI gets it wrong?
10:40AI is famous for, you know, coming up with wrong answers sometimes.
10:44And, you know, there's lots of disclaimers.
10:46Make sure you go back and check with the source material.
10:48If Penny tells me something is refundable and it's not refundable and I lose my deposit,
10:52you know, who owns that mistake?
10:54So it's an interesting question.
10:55Where is the liability?
10:57And I was trained as an attorney.
10:59I've never practiced as a lawyer.
11:01But I do remember a little bit of my education.
11:05And the issue is in, this is a consumer product, let's say.
11:09Let's do a consumer product issue.
11:10Now, if you have a car that has a manufacturing defect in it,
11:15and unfortunately there's an accident and there is harm to the driver of the car.
11:21So who's responsible now?
11:23You have the person who sold you the car.
11:25Well, that was maybe a retailer, a dealer.
11:28You have the company that created the car.
11:30Well, that's the manufacturer.
11:32But then the pieces that went wrong, that was probably done by a third party.
11:36So they made a mistake perhaps there too.
11:39And then, of course, maybe the driver didn't drive well.
11:42Okay?
11:43Now, who's responsible?
11:44And under, in the U.S., I know U.S. law much better than I know any of the European
11:49laws in this area.
11:50There's a thing called strict liability.
11:52That if you cause the harm because your product was defective, you are responsible for it.
11:59And you would apportion where the amount of liability is.
12:02But the interesting thing, in a large language model, it's already said that, hey, this could be wrong.
12:09So the question is, was it defective?
12:12No, it did exactly what it was supposed to do.
12:14It made a prediction.
12:16And now it's up to you to decide whether or not.
12:18Now, I think that's something that government's going to spend a lot of time because, well, that is all true,
12:23what I just said.
12:24The language is making a prediction.
12:27You know it makes predictions.
12:28Therefore, have you assumed the risk of the bad prediction?
12:34In consumer product law, they would say, well, you can't contract your way out of strict liability.
12:39You can't have an exception.
12:40Well, this thing, you know, my lawnmower may run me over.
12:44Yeah, you can't get out of that.
12:45So this is an area where governments really need to go forward.
12:48In travel, for us, look, I feel that we're responsible for our customers.
12:53That's why we're careful.
12:54That's why we're always looking to make sure when we are implementing our models, when we are putting together new
13:00ways to do things, we always want to make sure it's right and it's safe.
13:05Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, okay.
13:08And I do want to talk a little bit about the elephant in the room with this, which is that
13:12ChatGPT, Claude, are getting very good at making travel recommendations and neighborhood recommendations and restaurant recommendations.
13:21How do you make sure you continue to own that customer relationship when people might just as easily type things
13:29into the chat bot that they're already talking to?
13:31You know, it's fascinating, and that question's come up a lot.
13:34Last year, it came up more than now.
13:36So there are two things to think about.
13:39The most important one really is just because there are now LLMs that make good predictions in terms of helping
13:46travel planning and things like that, we always had a lot of competition for that in how people decide.
13:54And there's a headline in the, well, a competitor of yours, let's say, a quote from me saying, we have
14:03to win the booking every day.
14:07I mean, the fact is there's so many ways you can do your travel.
14:10And how do we do that?
14:11We do it through trust.
14:13That's the biggest thing.
14:14Making sure that the customer believes, the traveler believes, they trust, that they're getting the best deal, they're getting the
14:22most value, that it's going to be something that they're going to enjoy, that it's going to work the way
14:27we say it's going to work.
14:28That if, God forbid, something goes wrong, and as I said earlier, something is going to go wrong, I assure
14:34you, take enough trips, you'll have an experience that you will not be happy about.
14:38Having somebody there who's able to fix that very quickly, that's how you do it.
14:44You know, I'll use, it's not in our area, Amazon.
14:47I mean, there are lots of ways I can buy stuff, but I use Amazon all the time.
14:51Why?
14:52Because I trust the brand.
14:54It's always performed for me the same way booking.
14:57So a lot of people don't know this.
14:58Do you know that 65% at booking.com people are coming to us direct?
15:06They're not going from Google.
15:07They're not coming from an L.
15:1065%.
15:10Why is that?
15:11Because we're providing a service that they absolutely enjoy, they believe is doing something that is providing them the value
15:20for the effort they're putting in.
15:22So if there was a Claude travel model that got rolled out next week, would you be particularly worried, or
15:28how would you counter that?
15:30Every day we have to continue to improve our products.
15:32Every single day.
15:33And there are lots of people using Claude to create competitive products.
15:39I see them all the time.
15:41And there are lots of lots.
15:41Travel is not so easy, though.
15:43Just because you got a model that does a good job or an okay job right now of predicting where
15:48you want to go, even if it has the personalization, which it doesn't from what we do.
15:53But the complications of travel, it's unbelievable, the amount of things that have to go behind the scene, the issues
16:01of payments, the issues of regulations, which are really important.
16:07And a lot of people, they jump in, oh, I can create this great trip planning thing using AI.
16:12They don't recognize before you sell a single travel item, you might want to read a little about what the
16:18laws and obligations you have when you start doing that.
16:21And I can go on and on and on.
16:23But it is much more complex.
16:25Things like how you're going to handle payments.
16:27What are you going to do about that?
16:29How are you, then, boy, you want to talk about regulations and payments?
16:32That's an area that's a weed to go, you know, unbelievable.
16:35And there's so many different areas that we believe, because we have this, we've had a long time in this
16:43industry learning how do you do it, what's the best way to do it, I believe we'll be competitive for
16:48a very long time.
16:49But that does not mean we can just rest on our laurels.
16:53It doesn't mean just because we're number one today, we'll be number one tomorrow.
16:56We've got to every day improve it.
16:58Look, we've all seen companies.
16:59They were great.
17:00They were fantastic.
17:02And then they lost their mojo and are no longer here.
17:06But your moat is the decades of data that you've got and the experience that you've got and the customer
17:11relationships that you maintain.
17:17What, given all that data, given that huge pool of data that you've gotten information and knowledge, what is AI
17:23allowing you to do with that data and information that you couldn't do maybe five years ago?
17:27Well, again, it'll be the personalization is going to be just so great, so fantastic.
17:32Being able to use what people, by the evidence of what they have chosen in the past or not chosen
17:39in the past and all the things that we have been able to learn, what they have told us, to
17:45be able to do a better job of coming up with what they really want.
17:49I don't know about you, but I'm still bombarded by a lot of stuff I have absolutely zero interest in.
17:55I really would prefer I just got things sent to me that are offered to me when I'm working with
18:01the stuff I want.
18:02Now, look, I mentioned Amazon.
18:03I love Amazon, I love Andy, and it's great, wonderful.
18:06But the truth of the matter is, how many times have I been on Amazon and they're sending up all
18:10this crap I will never buy?
18:12I don't want to do that.
18:14You don't want to do that with vacations.
18:15I don't want people to do it for any kind of travel.
18:19Now, you've mentioned the regulatory environment.
18:22Booking has sort of a foot in the U.S., in Europe.
18:29Europe's in the middle of trying to define its own approach to AI right now.
18:32Data platforms, digital sovereignty.
18:35So when it comes to AI, what do you think Europe is getting right, and what is it getting wrong?
18:43Well, let's take the question and turn a little bit of, like, what do we need to do to make
18:48it better?
18:49How about that?
18:50Okay.
18:50Because, look, Booking.com was born, as I said, a long time ago, in the 90s, late 90s, and in
18:58the Netherlands.
18:58And it is the absolute leader in its space using technology.
19:03And we were able to develop this company fantastically.
19:06One of the reasons we were able to do that is because the regulatory framework enabled us to move fast,
19:14make changes, get out ahead.
19:17Unfortunately, now, the environment for business in general, and technology even more so, is unfortunately somewhat shackled by the regulatory
19:30frameworks.
19:30We are spending so much of our time dealing with duplicative regulations.
19:37You have EU, then you have member state laws that are on top of each other.
19:41You have conflicts between the different things.
19:44You know, if we really truly had a single, common, unified, one market, it'd be wonderful.
19:51But we don't.
19:52And there's the issue, too, I think, in terms of the amount of capital that's available here.
19:57And the complaints are, well, the capital markets are not one market.
20:01And that's a problem, too.
20:03I will say that when I see so many people who are creating great companies and then leaving Europe and
20:11going to the Silicon Valley and taking that intellectual ability away from here, that's not good.
20:19And then we should be asking them, why are you leaving?
20:22Why did you go there?
20:23Is it because the taxation is bad?
20:25Is it because I'm not getting the help I need in terms of resources?
20:30Is it because I get more capital in San Francisco than I can in London?
20:36We have to find out what those issues are and really take it, you know, take the initiative to solve
20:43those problems.
20:44If we want to continue to create great technology jobs in the future that we at Booking.com have done
20:51over the 27 years I've been at this company.
20:55So what are you asking regulators for?
20:56Sorry?
20:57What are you asking regulators for?
20:59Oh, my Lord.
21:00When you look at all the regulations, I mean, is there a letter that hasn't been used in terms of
21:07a new regulation?
21:09I mean, DMA, DSA, DFA, EU, AIA.
21:12I can just go through the whole alphabet.
21:14I don't think Z has been used yet.
21:15But it's just too much, too soon, duplicative.
21:19Let's let the dust settle.
21:20Let's see what's effective.
21:22You know, one of the great things that made Booking.com fantastic is we were one of the first people
21:27to really do A-B testing at scale.
21:30And this is, you know, the turn of the century, really doing it, okay?
21:33Do you think we do A-B testing with regulations at all?
21:37How many times do we actually try and measure are these things being effective or not?
21:41What is the ROI on this regulation?
21:44I don't believe that many times it is done.
21:46And I believe many times if we actually did try and do that, we'd find out, you know, something, not
21:52only it was not effective in trying to accomplish the goal it was trying to accomplish,
21:56it's actually created things worse because you end up with all these things that are the law of unintended consequences.
22:03But we all know, we see it with our own eyes, that we need to make changes here if we
22:10want to continue to lead or try to lead or be a leader.
22:14Look, we know we have some of the best universities in the world.
22:17It's not like people here aren't smart.
22:20It's not like we're not willing to work.
22:22It's the issue of how this structure has been set up.
22:26If we change that, I think we can accomplish great things.
22:30Okay.
22:31Oh, last 30 seconds.
22:33Lightning round.
22:35Looking five years out, how will AI have reshaped the travel agency or travel industry?
22:42What's the most fundamental change that a consumer will see?
22:45Every single person who gets frustrated with travel right now, five years from now, that will happen.
22:51Less so.
22:52I won't promise it won't happen at all.
22:54I can't control the weather.
22:56As many email complaints I get from customers that it rained on their holiday and they want their money back,
23:01we don't control the weather.
23:02And I ain't going to be doing it in five years.
23:04But other things, we absolutely will be improving fantastically.
23:08Okay.
23:09Thank you very much.
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