Travel Through the Lens of AI with with Booking.com CEO Glenn Fogel
Jul 9, 2026 · 41:05
Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel tells Elad Gil how he rode Priceline from the dot-com bust to a 1000x gain, arguing AI is a tool, not a threat, to travel. Fogel, who joined a week before the Nasdaq peaked, recalls the stock falling to $1 before a reverse split, and sees the same boom-bust pattern in AI. He shows how agentic tools like Priceline's Penny handle complex trips and cut customer service costs 10% per contact, while Booking invests $700 million in AI and tech. Yet he says there are no moats: scale like 8.6 million alternative accommodation listings only helps, and constant innovation is the only defense. He defends returning cash to shareholders—40% of shares bought back in a dozen years—and warns that AI job displacement demands upskilling, not rejection of technology.
