Booking Holdings CEO on agentic travel: the AI executive assistant that rebooks your whole trip automatically

president and CEO of Booking.com. Hopefully, we'll be able to book a hotel on the moon. We can ask him about it. He's in the reream waiting room. Let's bring him in to the TVPN Ultradome. Glenn, how are you doing?

What's happening?

I'm doing well. And that's so exciting to hear. Hotels on the moon.

I know. I love it. The TAM expander. you guys were looking for more for more assets to bring on the platform. Why not go interplanetary? This thing is quite a lot of renders. So, uh you know, fingers crossed they can turn it into reality.

Uh but

yeah, but but but but here's the thing. Do you remember the TV series like I think it was Oh god, was it AMC? It was Mad Men. Do you remember that?

Yeah, there was an episode where the person who was supposed to be the head of Hilton, Conrad Hilton.

Yeah. and he'd hired he'd hired the guy and he wanted to have the ad be about putting a hotel on the moon

ahead of ahead of their time.

Ahead of their time.

They uh this company should should go back and reference it. I'm sure there's I'm sure there's some great uh copy buried in there. Uh but fantastic to have you on the show. Would love uh would love a just an introduction on yourself and the journey on on how you got here. Well, um the CEO of Booking Holdings and Booking.com, which is the largest subsidiary of Booking Holdings. We have a number of different companies that I think many of your uh watchers would know. Things like not just Booking.com, but Open Table for example

or Kayak or Price Line. And people who are out in Asia certainly have heard of AOD and a number of other uh companies as well. And we do travel. Opentable of course doing restaurant reservations, but we've been around for a long time. Priceeline.com was the first one in in the states and that went public in 1999 and I've been in the company since almost the start. I joined in 2000. So been around for a while.

Where did where were you before uh before you joined? Before I joined it in 2000, I was uh I was a head trader for a guy named Barn Biggs who was kind of a legend on Wall Street at Morgan Stanley Asset Management. And uh I left to join Priceel Line during that first internet boom period. And I joined a week before the NASDAQ peaked in March of 2000, thereby proving a couple things. One, I absolutely should have left my job as trader because I just done what's known as top ticking trade. Amazing. Amazing timing to leave, but then you're sitting there being like, is [laughter]

am I going to am I going to have a job? Uh

totally. Well, what Yeah. What matters is you you uh you saw it through. Uh did you ever was there any was there ever a point that you uh or or any of your peers were like, "Okay, maybe the internet is just over." or was it like, hey, we just we really we it's just like we need to just really hunker down and we got ahead of our skis and uh this is all inevitable, but uh it's just not, you know, like most things, it's not always up into the right uh forever.

Well, yeah, and a couple things. First of all, certainly uh our stock went down. I'm going to do the reverse split number because it went it went to a under a dollar, but stay listed, we had to actually do a reverse split. [laughter] So So we'll call it what at that time. As you can see on the chart, it's $6 because we get it back up. So, uh, even my mother at the time thought like, gee, are do you still have a job? Is the company got bankrupt yet or not?

And, um, I left a pretty good job to do this. But here's the thing, a long time ago, my career, I started out when I came out of, uh, college, and this is in the 80s. My first job is I was an IT guy again at Morgan Stanley, different time period. I was in their back office doing coding for doing a whole bunch of real exciting things. One of the exciting things was things that we're doing in terms of algorithmic trading. Now that was back in the day. We weren't calling it AI, though that's exactly what it was. You know, go from the mid80s to [clears throat] joining in 2000. I really believed in the future of using technology to make life so much better in so many different ways. Price line at the time was using technology to make it cheaper and easier to travel. So I I never doubted the concept that technology is the it's always been the future. I mean go back a couple hundred years go back to the industrial revolution. Technology is a wonderful thing for improving the human condition. So I would do not doubt that. I I was a little concerned about our cash position and everybody [laughter] should always be but sense I was there.

Yeah. Never lost. How have you been uh processing all of the agentic commerce news? We had uh Harley from Shopify on the store talk on the show yesterday talking about uh what Google's doing. Obviously, ChatgPT is interested in uh Agentic Commerce being able to uh you know complete transactions in the LLMs, in the chat bots, and the apps. Uh how are you thinking about your strategy in a world where people want to purchase things through text and chat?

Well, look, people always want things to be easier and agented commerce as a concept is fantastic and we are doing a lot of work with all the frontier players absolutely to be very handin glove working together to come up with solutions using aentic ways so people can do things easier, faster, better, etc., etc. That being said, it's going to take some time for things that are very complex, like a lot of travel. Now, I'm not doubting that we're going to be doing a lot of agendic travel uh transactions. Absolutely. It's just not going to be tomorrow. I'm really glad with some of the deals we've already done with all the players. There's not a single one that we haven't either set a deal with, done a deal with, working with, making progress with, etc., but even more so is what we're going to do internally, what we're building ourselves. We have thousands of engineers. You know, one thing I don't know if your uh watchers or people who watch your show really understand the size of our company. You know, we'reund approximately 170 175 billion market cap company.

Hit the gong, John. We got a gong here. We'd love to we'd love to hit it on your behalf.

But what's even better is that, you know, that's twice as big as the next biggest player in travel. And I'm talking, you know, distribution travel. I'm talking all travel. Like number two, maybe it's Marriott today.

Oh, wow.

Maybe I And then after that, it falls off pretty darn The biggest airline in the world is about a third of our market cap.

I mean, Expedia is a fifth.

I mean, so we have the size, we've got the scale to do the work to come up with these wonderful things that are going to be coming down the pike.

Yeah.

Yep. So, uh, obviously it feels like it's advantageous to have as much experience as you have at the company for another tech transition. Uh, how are you thinking? We were talking to Harley about this. Like, is this the is this similar to the mobile moment or social moment? Obviously with Shopify, they think a lot about brands, which were very much transformed by influencers showing off some leggings or some product that you want to buy. And so, you go right there. And there was a debate will it would that transaction happen on Instagram or on Facebook? It ultimately wound up happening on Shopify, but the ads platform was very valuable and there was an integration there. Um, how are you tracking previous lessons from previous technology shifts in purchasing behavior to kind of prepare for the the agentic transition if it happens this year or next year or whenever it happens.

Yeah. And and because it's so hard to predict the future, as we all know, is making sure you're covering all the options, trying to balance the amount of resources you're putting in the things that you're building now versus making sure you continue to improve what you currently have going on that's producing the cash. I mean, that's the thing is that it's always difficult when you have an ongoing entity like ours that's doing very well and our investors like seeing the cash flow that we produce. they like the growth that we're showing right now and they are always cautious as investors should be is where are you putting that you know cash that you're producing is it going to be put into things that are not going to produce future increased cash is it going to be wasted or not and I believe we got the right balance set up we've got the right people I but in terms of people want to know I'm asked this all the time it's two questions it's always be are you going to be disintermediated by something new something different and B are growing fast enough right now to prevent that. [laughter] So, I think we have it going well right now. I like the progress that we're making. I like the numbers are showing off and I like the new products we have coming out. So, we'll see. But I look, nobody nobody has a guarantee. You have to every single day be working incredibly hard to keep up because the competition is very very stiff. How difficult is it to uh for an AI to act as a travel agent?

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.

We we we we've had this question where uh the AI models seem so powerful. They can build whole websites. They can write more complex code than I could write in a month. They can do it in just an hour. And yet I actually can't just say, "Hey, I need to get to New York. Book me a flight." Because I wind up having all these weird preferences. I don't want to lay over. I'm okay flying early, but I don't really want to fly late.

Yeah. When people talk, every every lab wants to build the best, you know, super assistant. And when I think about the moments where uh and like a real EA in my life has delivered the most value, it's when I'm like, okay, this meeting's running late. I'm going to miss my flight.

I need to re, you know, and I'm just firing off a text being like, you know, I need to uh switch the car to pick me up like in an extra hour and I'm going to miss my flight. Find me the best flight. I don't want to lay over like I want to lay flat. Like all all these details that today that still takes, you know, that still takes real time. And so I'm curious for you like where do these experience where do you see these experiences actually sitting? Is it is it in, you know, chat GBT or Gemini or it's it's going to be sitting in Siri or will it be sitting on Booking.com and you guys want to own that experience or both?

Right. or will it be in many of the places you just mentioned? Because for example, right now let's let's look at what we have right now. We have some we have 60 approximately 65% of the people who come to our site to buy something or do something want to actually do that. They are coming to us direct. Now I'm doing that number. I'm not including our B2B business on the side there. But 65% of the people are coming in directly to our site. There's a loyalty thing. Why? Now why? Because it's easier. because we know who they are. We already have established certain things that they like and are able to provide them with that. That's great. The thing in the future though with the ability of memory of LLMs to remember what your preferences are over time, that is obviously a powerful thing. Now we are doing that within ourselves creating our own ability to make sure your example I want a flat bed. I only like to take the uh flight at night. All sorts of those things. Those are the things that we are putting in because what we really want is using technology to replace what you just said. That executive assistant who knows everything about you, who loves to make sure they do exactly what you want, and you don't have to ask him or her how to do it. They know how to do it. That's what we are building. That's even more so cuz your E8 should know but may not know for example that oh I forgot I got to stop by and buy a present cuz I'm going to visit my you know friend in France may not know that but we want to have it so much so that we know so much about you. We know that and not only we know that we know that's going to take a 10-minute delay and oops you may not make that flight because of the delay on the highway. So we're going to switch all this stuff around for you. suggest should we do this because it looks like you're not going to make it. So then you can get on a flight, you don't miss the flight, and then because it's a new flight, we automatically are changing the car pickup that you have. And we're changing because now your dinner reservations can be later. We're changing that, too. And if there is no availability at that restaurant because we have open table, we're looking for a restaurant that's very similar to it right near it. And we're going to put a new reservation for you and your friend there. And in addition, because we know you're going to be incredibly tired and you're going to be all upset, what we're going to do is get you a special favor from the hotel. So when you show up at the hotel, you got your favorite uh bottle of wine and all these things can be done. The technology is there.

We just have to stitch it together. That's the hard part.

How are you uh how are you processing the rise of voice agents? I get really excited about uh you know there's so many moments still even with the internet where you if you're traveling you end up having to like call a hotel or talk to somebody in person. Uh never really want to do that right it's just like give me the information etc. Uh, but it feels like we're moving to a world where uh eventually it could just be agent to agent directly, no voice. But feels like we're gonna there's some middle ground where you have agent to human uh or voice agent to voice agent and they're just having a conversation.

Voice agent to like legacy phone tree which is all recordings, but it's deterministic system. And just having an agent be able to run through that speeds things up. Well, one of the wonderful things about right now that's already we're already doing it and other people are doing it too is using Genai to really speed up and make that customer service issue go away. So, that's something that's really powerful and it is the idea that you don't want to spend time talking to somebody. You certainly don't want to be put on hold. You just want to solve the problem. And with what we've been able to do with some of our vendors, some of the things we do internally is create a much better thing. When you need customer service, you can solve it instantly almost. That's great. Creates a greater loyalty because I like using Booking.com because I don't have to wait. It fixes it right away. That is a really powerful thing. But I agree with you going down. It's going to be a commodity. Everybody's going to be doing that.

What's the key to a great celebrity partnership?

Hiring spokesperson.

Yeah. The great thing is that it ends up with more business than what you paid them. [laughter]

Yeah.

There we go.

What are the keys to success? Uh what would you recommend? We've been we noticed uh we were watching uh the Xbox launch at CES and Bill Gates is standing on stage and he's next to Dwayne the Rock Johnson and he refers to him just as Rock. It's very funny. It's awkward in funny ways, but it's cool. It's interesting. Obviously, everyone knows the Priceel line negotiator. Uh, but what's the key to success? What would you recommend? When is the right time to bring in a celebrity? Like, do you have a mental model for this or have you just delegated it to someone else on your team? Like, how do you

Yeah, that that's one of the important things is knowing what you know and knowing what you don't know and making sure that the person you're spending a lot of money to be the chief marketing officer that that person knows. Yeah.

And if they don't, you have to get a different one. And that's why you're paying the money to make those decisions. But here's the truth is this is an old saying. It's uncertain who really said it first that half of your brand marketing is wasted. You just don't know which half. Yeah,

that's a problem. And that's the thing. And and by the way, I love I love it when you hit it and it goes out of the park, goes viral, like you just mentioned. I know you you've mentioned that one before about uh Bill and uh uh The Rock. But here's the thing is you can't predict those things. Sometimes you just hit that lightning in a bottle. A lot of the time it's just wasted money.

Yeah.

Uh what's your workout routine? You're looking absolutely jacked. [laughter] I got to ask.

Well, I'll be perfectly honest with you. I do work out every day. If I'm if I'm home, not traveling, half the time I'm away from my home. And uh you know, there are a lot of gyms in Europe that don't have a lot of hotels that don't have gyms. So, you're doing it in the hotel room, you know, small hotel room and stuff. I always bring some bands so I can get something done. But but I tell you it's so important because you know one of the things when you're you're doing all these every single person right now in the tech world we're all working incredibly hard and to stay healthy it's really important to work out.

Uh what do you uh have you ever we we've joked on the show before we we get frustrated at gyms having a a dumbbell a weight limit.

We think it's because of the insurance but most gyms the the weights the dumbbells start stop at 40 lb 50 lbs. They don't

I think that could be a booking booking.com feature is like I want I want hotels.

Yeah. So, first of all, you guys are big guys. Okay. Yeah. Let's face it, you know, 6'8 and 61. I mean, you're tall people. You're big people. Okay. Normalsized people don't worry about this [laughter] quite as much. Okay.

I know. But you have a small but but uh you know, very passionate audience.

Yeah. I tell Look, you you know the answer to this, by the way. It's not the amount of weight you can do more reps. You'll get the same impact, just less weight, more more reps. You'll be fine.

I love it.

Sometimes you just want to stack a couple 45s on the bar and move a big number. How are you?

No, no, wait, wait. This is important, GUYS. YOU GUYS ARE YOUNG GUYS, you know, young 30s, late 20s. You can do that stuff. I'm 63 years old. Okay.

But you look, that's why that's why I asked. Yeah.

Quick recommendations. What's on the shelf behind you? What would you give to somebody uh the next generation? What do you think is worth reading?

Oh god, there's so many things. There's not enough time to read everything. I'll give someone instead of reading. Here's here's a piece of advice I give all the time. And I I was I was I was actually in a classroom situation yesterday, guest guest lecturing something.

And what I really like to get across is the idea of prioritization and self-discipline.

You know, there's a book out, you don't have to read it. It's 4,000. It's called 4,000 weeks. That's kind of like the average time you have a lifetime. Okay,

you get the choice how you want to spend it. A lot of that make sure it's on the things that matter and things that are important to you. And I see too many people wasting their time. I mean, I don't want to I don't want to denigrate social media or any any [laughter] of my partners or anything, but I'll tell you a lot of people are wasting a lot of their time doing stuff that it has no impact in their life and later on they may regret not having used that time more efficiently and more effectively. That's possible. That's one outcome. But it's also possible that I'm on my deathbed being like, I wish I watched a few more Instagram reels. I wish I scrolled TikTok just for a couple more minutes.

No, I think I think uh I I think that the the what you're saying there's a very real scenario in the future where people uh you know are are towards the end of their life and they're just looking at their lifetime screen time on their iPhone just saying like don't do this, don't do this. Um I one more one more uh more serious question. How are you guys thinking about the live events category broadly? There's a lot of people talking about uh excited about live events specifically because they feel

screen time like like from AI.

Yeah.

Yeah. No, look obviously there's a lot of truth to that that people really are really enjoying those live event things. Now, for us in the travel business, there's a lot of talk when you have the Taylor Swift effect, it was called, where she'd [clears throat] be going doing a concert and there would be an increase in travel to that location and then all the local economy would build up a little bit on that. But for us that are because we're so global and we are [clears throat] so all that's doing is transferring what would be the normal amount of travel to that location. For us, we're indifferent. So for example, you know, we have this whole thing about World Cup and you know, it's a partnership between the US and Canada and Mexico. So and a lot of people are really hoping it's going to build some of the people coming to the US for travel and how much is that going to help our business. And to be perfectly honest with you, I don't think it's going to make that much of a difference because all it means that the people that do choose to come to watch World Cup in the state, come to the States for that, that's a trip they were going to take anyway. They haven't come to the States. We would have gotten that business anyway. Now, it's good for the cities that have the actual games. They'll get the benefit, but us as a company, I don't think there's going to be a huge difference.

One of the challenges of scale. You're like, we are the market. We're just shifting pieces around.

I have one last question.

That's right.

We'll let you go. Uh, you travel a lot. You run a travel company. What's the secret to avoiding jet lag? And

just keep doing it and then you'll never you'll be in normal state all the time. You notice [laughter] never stop moving.

This is good. I like that.

Just don't don't stop.

That's essentially just man up. [laughter] Just suck it up and just just disregard it. Just ignore it. I love that. That's the best advice I've heard. People will tell you all sorts of take your shoes off, do this, do that. I like that one. That's great.

No. No. It's ridiculous. Okay. And I've never felt jet lag, per se. [laughter]

Breaking. We need to put this on a headline. Breaking.

It doesn't exist. It's just a figment of your A figment of your imagination.

Yeah. No, it's not the imagination is you're going from uh JFK to Amsterdam. Okay, it's a 6 and a half hour flight. You're going to at best cuz you got to wait to take over and then they wake [clears throat] you up when you're landing. Maybe you'll get 4 hours good. Maybe

you're going to be tired. Is that leg? You got four hours sleep. That's why you're tired.

Okay. [laughter] Yeah,

there we go.

Makes sense. Well, I hope hopefully uh the rockets can get fast enough that uh when we're booking we're booking a hotel on the moon on Booking.com.

Yeah,

we It'll just be it'll see like we just, you know, teleported.

Well, thank you so much.

This was super fun. Come back on again soon. Really enjoyed it.

Thank you very much.

Cheers.

Goodbye.

Do you want to change the world?

Go to the New York Stock Exchange

and raise capital.

Raise capital at the New York Stock Exchange. Just do it. No more excuses.

Yeah, it's our number one piece of advice this year to to anyone who asks. What What advice would you give me?

That's going to be our advice for our next Just raise money. Hey, uh, next round JD,

do it at the New York Stock Exchange.

Just Just raise capital. Do a little road show.

Just do it. Stop making excuses. Yeah,

really. Stop making excuses.