Travel Through the Lens of AI with with Booking.com CEO Glenn Fogel
In a Nutshell
Booking.com CEO Glenn Fogel argues that AI is transforming travel from a frustrating, manual process into an agentic experience where systems like their "Penny" AI handle complex itineraries, disruptions, and personalized recommendations with superior speed and memory. The company is investing heavily in AI while maintaining that durable advantages come from scale (8.6M alternative listings), deep partner relationships, and regulatory navigation—not permanent moats. Fogel emphasizes capital discipline through massive buybacks, continuous innovation over complacency, and the need for companies to upskill workers as AI displaces roles faster than past technological shifts.
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There is no such thing as a moat. There is no such thing as somewhere you're going to be protected against innovation. Today we have a competitive advantage on areas absolutely but those can go away tomorrow. The only way to really long term is to continue to develop new services, new ways to do things. How can we do your business better? What do you need? Where you need more demand? Where are you hurting? It's so much more complex if you think you're just going to come in and do this business and knock away these very big players. I say you should really understand what the business is before you decide to commit your capital.
Glenn Fogel is the CEO of Booking Holdings, a 20-some year veteran of the company who joined when it was just Priceline and worth a few hundred million in the year 2000 and has since helped grow it to a hundred billion plus company with multiple massive assets across travel that are now being used in the AI era.
Glenn attended Wharton and Harvard Law. He worked in the MIS program at Morgan Stanley. His first job was putting tapes on a drive in a data center of IBM 384s and the discs that went and the tape drives and putting the tapes on the drive. He started as an operator of a mainframe. He then became a developer but learned that this was not a career for him.
All the people he knew from undergrad had gone off to investment banking and made money. He thought he should try to do that but could not transition directly from his current path. With a degree in finance from Wharton, Harvard led him into law school. He got a job on Wall Street as a banker and did that until 1995. The bank was bought by another bank and they fired most of the bankers including him.
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