Travel Through the Lens of AI with with Booking.com CEO Glenn Fogel

1. 0:00 – 0:05

   Cold Open

   1. GFGlenn Fogel0:00

      There is no such thing as a moat. There is no such thing as

2. 0:05 – 0:41

   Glenn Fogel Introduction

   1. GFGlenn Fogel0:05

      somewhere you're gonna be protected against innovation. Today, we have a competitive advantage on areas, absolutely, but those can go away tomorrow. The only way to win 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 gonna come in and do this business and knock away these very big players, I'd say you should really understand what the business is before you decide to commit your capital.

   2. SGSarah Guo0:38

      [upbeat music]

3. 0:41 – 6:49

   Glenn’s Early Career

   1. SGSarah Guo0:43

      Today on No Priors, we're talking with Glenn Fogel, the CEO of Booking Holdings, a 20-something-year veteran of the company, who joined when it was just Priceline and worth a few hundred million dollars in the year 2000, and has since helped grow it to $100 billion-plus company with multiple massive assets across travel that are now being used in the AI era. We will talk about a variety of topics with Glenn that span everything from, uh, the growth and changes that have happened in Bookings over time, as well as his own career and perspective on AI. So Glenn, thank you so much for joining us today.

   2. GFGlenn Fogel1:16

      Well, thank you very much for having me.

   3. SGSarah Guo1:18

      Yeah. So you've, you've had a really interesting career. Um, you know, you, uh, went to Wharton, you went to Harvard Law. Along the way you, uh, worked in, I think, the MIS program at Morgan Stanley. I- I'd love to just hear a little about your early background and how that led you eventually to Booking.com and eventually Booking Holdings.

   4. GFGlenn Fogel1:37

      Sure, I can do that. So, um, real short, I came out of Wharton with a degree in finance, and now I end up in the back office doing MIS. Uh, uh, my first job is putting tapes on a drive in a data center, uh, IBM 3084s and the disks that went in, and, and the tape drives, and putting the, putting the tapes on, on the drive. That's where I started. And then as an operator, actually being an operator of a mainframe, uh, very different, nothing that you prepared for that in college for that.

   5. SGSarah Guo2:08

      Yeah.

   6. GFGlenn Fogel2:08

      And I then become, uh, you become a developer and you... But I basically learned that this is not a career for me. I should do something else. And all the people I knew undergrad at Wharton were going off to investment banking, making all this money, and I thought, "I should try to do that." But you can't go. I've now gone down one chute, and you can't just jump out of that one to go become investment banker. So I said, "Oh, I got a degree in finance from Wharton, and Harvard let me in the law school, so I'll do that," 'cause that's another route. I did that, and I end up, uh, getting a job on Wall Street as a banker. I did that for till '95, till 1995. And then the bank was bought by another bank, and they fired all the bankers, almost. Not every banker. They fired most of them, including me. But not everybody, because if they fired everybody, you could say, "Well, they fired everybody."

   7. SGSarah Guo3:00

      Yeah.

   8. GFGlenn Fogel3:00

      But they didn't fire everybody, so you... Y- there was a, there was actually some people were picked to stay. And I was not one of them. And that, that's pretty bad. So a real good lesson, though, having been fired and knowing what it's like, that is something that I've kept with me throughout my career about how to do it right, not do it wrong, and understand what goes through the other person when you tell them that, "I'm sorry, but there's no longer a need for you here, and this is not the place for you to be." And I, I really learned that firsthand being on that side of the table. And so now I'm unemployed. And, uh, my father had, had just died re- you know, not that long before this happened. So now my father's died, lost the job, uh, my grandmother died, and, um, even the dog died, which was kind of sad. And I'm like, "What do I want to do with my life now?" In my young 30s, I'm alone, I'm single, whatever. And I said, "You know, I always wanted to write a book." So I, I, I start writing a book. I write a novel. I get it done, and now I'm gonna try and get it published, and it's not really self-publishing then. You weren't doing it on your own. You're trying to get some agent to pick it up. And I was introduced to a woman as a, a blind date from a friend. And I, uh, she was a lawyer, but, uh, I don't know. And they said, "Well, she used to work at Random House as an editor." I said, "Ooh, I'm very interested in having you read my book."

   9. SGSarah Guo4:15

      [laughs]

   10. GFGlenn Fogel4:16

       And, uh, so we have a date, and, uh, the book never gets published, but I do end up marrying her and have two great kids, and it's a wonderful life. But while I was trying to get the book, you know, an agent to be interested in it, eventually she said, "You know, if this relationship's gonna go forward, you should get a job." I said, "Damn it, what should I do?"

   11. SGSarah Guo4:33

       [laughs]

   12. GFGlenn Fogel4:33

       I didn't wanna go back to banking, and I said, "I don't know." And a friend of mine from law school was a senior type person at Morgan Stanley. And he- I told him, "Look, Amy says I have to get a job. Do you got any thoughts?" He said, "Well, we have this trading position, you know, that you could do." I said, "I've never traded anything in my life." He said, "Ah, don't worry, you'll be fine." It's like, okay. So I end up being head trader for a guy named Barton Biggs, kind of a Wall Street legend and stuff. I do that for a number of years, but I just don't like it. It's not that exciting. It's just not for me. And that's when the internet was really taking off, that first real explosion, you know, the internet boom. That's late '90s. So 1999, I started trying to interview, and I'm thinking, "Well, I got some skills." I, when I was, uh, an IT person, so I got that, and I know a little bit about corporate development because being investment banker. And I started interviewing. The only real company on the East Coast at the time of internet, you know, abilities was Priceline, and they had a job for corporate development. I went, "Perfect." So I get an offer from them, but I said, "I wanna wait. I wanna wait till I get my bonus for 1999." We gets paid at the end of February 2000. So I go and I get my bonus check, and I'm ready to start, and that's when, of course, that's when the Nasdaq peaked. Thereby having gone long internet a week before [laughs] the Nasdaq peaked.

   13. SGSarah Guo5:59

       Ah.

   14. GFGlenn Fogel6:00

       And, um, it, it proved that I shouldn't be a trader, I mean, just-

   15. SGSarah Guo6:03

       Right

   16. GFGlenn Fogel6:03

       ... went the absolute wrong way. And, um, you know, Priceline has its difficulties after that. Our stock went from where we were... When we went public, we, in a week or so, we were $30 billion, which back then was real money, and that meant something back then. And by the time I joined, I joined after the I- you know, a few months after the IPO, I joined, we were probably down to about $15 billion. That's now, you know, February, March of 2000. In nine months, our market cap is now down to just a couple of hundred million.

   17. SGSarah Guo6:37

       Wow.

   18. GFGlenn Fogel6:37

       And our stock is now trading at a dollar a share. We're gonna get delisted because it's dropping below a, a dollar a share. But stick with it, we do a reverse split to make sure we don't get delisted, so it goes to $6 a share.

4. 6:49 – 9:24

   Lessons from the Early Internet

   1. GFGlenn Fogel6:49

      And I stay, and now I've been there 27-- on my 27th year.

   2. SGSarah Guo6:54

      Wow.

   3. GFGlenn Fogel6:54

      And we went from that, that now reverse split $6, and in last summer, we came very close to $6,000.

   4. SGSarah Guo7:02

      Wow.

   5. GFGlenn Fogel7:02

      So over that-

   6. SGSarah Guo7:03

      Yeah

   7. GFGlenn Fogel7:03

      ... you know, a little more than a quarter of a century, up 1000 times. And, you know, market cap was peaking around 180 billion. Remember, it was a few hundred million.

   8. SGSarah Guo7:14

      Yeah, that's amazing.

   9. GFGlenn Fogel7:15

      It's been a good ride so far, but of course, you never stop. Every day is a new adventure. Every day is... You gotta... A, a big headline in the FT when I had an interview with them, and I said, "Gotta fight for a customer every day."

   10. SGSarah Guo7:27

       How do you think about this, the lessons from that internet era in terms of the current AI wave? Because we're seeing-

   11. GFGlenn Fogel7:33

       Yeah

   12. SGSarah Guo7:34

       ... this, uh, massive shift in market cap.

   13. GFGlenn Fogel7:37

       You think, like, this is a complete explosion of new things, of all these would come-

   14. SGSarah Guo7:41

       Mm-hmm

   15. GFGlenn Fogel7:41

       ... everything, just like in the late '90s. The optimism of technology is gonna solve everything. It's gonna be wonderful. But then you get a little bit of the backlash coming. There was backlash then, too. And now you... I guess-

   16. SGSarah Guo7:55

       Yeah

   17. GFGlenn Fogel7:56

       ... it's just, it's just bigger than it was then. The numbers are much bigger. The issues at hand are much bigger, the pluses and the minuses. So I, but I do see a lot of parallels.

   18. SGSarah Guo8:07

       Yeah, because, you know, when I look at it right now, um, some companies clearly have enormous revenue bases. You know, OpenAI and Anthropic are rumored to have $30 to $50 billion in revenue run rate each. And, um, you know, in parallel, you see companies that are extremely highly valued, $10 billion, et cetera, that don't necessarily have even revenue yet. And if you look at the internet era, I think it was something like 450 companies went public in '99, 450 went public in the first few months of 2000. Maybe 500 went public before that, so you had 1,500 companies of which, what, two dozen are left at most?

   19. GFGlenn Fogel8:40

       Maybe. Maybe-

   20. SGSarah Guo8:41

       You know, the other 1,480 are gone. And so do you think the same thing will happen to the AI set of companies? Do you think something different will happen? Like... And those are IPOs, by the way. Those are the very strongest or perceived to be strongest companies, right?

   21. GFGlenn Fogel8:56

       Right. Well, I, I, I wouldn't wanna even guess at what the ratio of success to failures will be this time around versus that time, versus any other time when there was incredible boom. And, you know, if we go over the last 150 years, there's always been these kind of swinging further back-

   22. SGSarah Guo9:16

       Yeah

   23. GFGlenn Fogel9:17

       ... you know, speculative booms that create tremendous innovation, people coming in, just

5. 9:24 – 10:56

   Deciding Factors for Exiting

   1. GFGlenn Fogel9:24

      both money and people. I mean, California, you know, the 49ers, I mean, everybody's running off to the hills to gold, and it was gonna be great. And I'm sure there were a lot of companies selling, you know, axes and hammers-

   2. SGSarah Guo9:37

      Yeah, yeah

   3. GFGlenn Fogel9:38

      ... and water and-

   4. SGSarah Guo9:38

      Detroit auto boom, same thing.

   5. GFGlenn Fogel9:39

      Yeah.

   6. SGSarah Guo9:39

      You know, we've seen this before.

   7. GFGlenn Fogel9:40

      Exactly.

   8. SGSarah Guo9:40

      Yeah.

   9. GFGlenn Fogel9:40

      And how many of them? So I don't know. But I, I... This is not new, and there'll be a great deal of disappointment. There'll be a lot of people who are gonna lose a lot of money, of course. That's just the nature of how our economy to work, and when there's speculative bubbles, that will bring a lot. But that doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of companies, actually, of real value that aren't gonna make-

   10. SGSarah Guo10:02

       How do you think as a, as a founder running a company or as a CEO, you should make the decision in terms of whether to keep going or whether to sell? It's kinda like, okay, Priceline is worth a couple hundred million dollars, and the decision was made, we'll keep going no matter what, and there may or may not have been options in terms of exits. I have no idea. Um, but in today's era, there's quite a few options in terms of exits. Should people mainly be thinking about exiting right now, do you think? Do you think they should keep going?

   11. GFGlenn Fogel10:26

       Yeah, I think that's right. I don't think we can give a, a general rule without knowing what the facts of that specific situation are. And by the way, there were times early in the day where Priceline would've been happy if somebody had made an offer [laughs] .

   12. SGSarah Guo10:40

       Yeah, yeah.

   13. GFGlenn Fogel10:41

       At least somebody offered. It really depends a lot on what the situation is, how confident is management and the people who have put the money in that this, there is gonna be a future. And how concerned are you with what, what are you really trying to do?

6. 10:56 – 13:30

   Travel Through the Lens of AI

   1. GFGlenn Fogel10:56

      Are you trying to accomplish something? The goal is to actually make something that matters, or are you just here to make money? And nothing wrong with that. I'm not against that. But you gotta understand, what is your motivation? What are you trying to achieve? We have, on average, I don't know if you're American, male, for how because I think that's what I put there, I have a 78-year expected lifespan when you're born. Of course, the longer you live, the higher the expect- Whatever it is, and how are you gonna spend those years?

   2. SGSarah Guo11:23

      Yeah.

   3. GFGlenn Fogel11:23

      What is important to you? What do you wanna do? What's the meaning to it? And I'll let the people who are actually involved in those situations decide. I would not, I would not give anybody a general advice.

   4. SGSarah Guo11:33

      Mm-hmm. Makes sense. So, I mean, back to Booking. Um, you know, one of the categories that you all obviously are, um, really crucial to is, um, travel. And there's a number of the next-gen sort of AI companies who've started experimenting with things, like OpenAI, uh, had, um, uh, checkout in ChatGPT and, you know, one of their main use cases was travel, and then they canceled that feature. And I think at the time, Booking went up 8% on the news. What, what do you think didn't work there? Or what, what do you think How do you think, uh, people should think about travel through the lens of AI?

   5. GFGlenn Fogel12:08

      So I think we should back up a little bit so everybody understands what's going on here. So in any type of situation, you'll have people who are not that knowledgeable about an industry or about how, uh, things actually happen in a business. And so from the outside, it looks rather easy to, "Oh, this will be easy. Um, AI will take care of travel and all the travel companies won't be worthwhile, won't be worth anything." And so... And that was why companies like ourselves took a big hit as some of the new models were dropped that had a much better way of doing agentic commerce or so it was perceived at the time. And then when the deci- when people make announcements, "Well, we're not gonna do that," like when, uh, OpenAI said, "We're not planning to be a merchant of record trying to do..." Or, "We're not even gonna keep in this app [chuckles] type of way of doing commerce. We're not doing that." Then people say, "Oh, well, that... I, I, I was wrong. I'm not gonna worry about it as much." And it flips to the other side. The truth is, the way we look at AI is an incredible beneficial tool and a way for us to be able to do our mission easier, hopefully cheaper and better for our customers. All business, what is the purpose of a business? A business is to do something of

7. 13:30 – 18:59

   Agentic Travel Planning

   1. GFGlenn Fogel13:30

      value to its customers. We have two kinds of customers. We got travelers and we got partners. We are in the middle of that. We're a marketplace. How can we do it better? And AI, particularly AI using, uh, large language models and other things like that can help make it a much more valuable, uh, method for people, travelers to get information they need to do what they want to do and beneficial to our partners. That's the thing. Now, the idea of ChatGPT, you know, telling you no longer having one, uh, method, I, I wouldn't read too much into that one way or the other.

   2. SGSarah Guo14:08

      Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. You know, it's interesting because I'm in the middle of Silicon Valley where people are very, uh, AGI-pilled, right? We-- People strongly believe, uh, that AI will drive all sorts of things, that in some cases it will, and in some cases it'll take longer, in some cases it won't. You know, it reminds me a little bit of crypto where crypto was gonna solve everything and it didn't, but it was very important for certain aspects of the financial system, and I think stable coins and other things are increasingly valuable there. On the AI side, what a lot of people are really moving towards is more agentic work, and that could be specific companies like Decagon having agents that do customer support, but it's also the larger platforms like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, et cetera, providing increasingly, um, self-driven systems, Codex or, uh, Cloud CoWork or, you know, some of the things Gemini is doing. And one of the arguments people are making is that the nature of UI is gonna change, and you're gonna have agents doing transactions on your behalf and sourcing things like trips or figuring out your travel itinerary for you or, uh, buying or purchasing, um, the, the actual different aspects of travel. A, A, do you think that's a ch- uh, correct vision of the world? And B, do you think, um... Or how do you view that interacting with booking and what you all provide as a service?

   3. GFGlenn Fogel15:23

      Uh, so again, we want to reduce this to understanding what does the customer want. Many people with travel find it very frustrating. I know that. You know that. We all travel and find it very frustrating. Trying to put together a complicated trip with family, let's say, multiple destinations, different things you want to do, it's complex and it's a pain, and you start planning it and then you stop because it's just too much of a pain. And everybody would like somebody else to know. Many people would like somebody else to do it for them. In fact, that's why you'll find very wealthy people have travel concierge people who are actually human beings who really understand the needs of that customer, what they really like and not, and they will do a lot of the hard work for them. People who aren't quite in that wealth zone, they'll have their partner or their spouse trying to do it for them. [chuckles] I'll be perfectly honest, I'm exposing myself here, but I'll say it, okay? My wife and I sometimes argue about, [chuckles] "Okay, who's gonna have to do all the travel planning-

   4. SGSarah Guo16:18

      Sure

   5. GFGlenn Fogel16:19

      ... for this trip?" Because it can be frustrating, et cetera. Now, with AI, the beauty is it's going to make it so much easier, and it's doing it right now. We are doing it right now. And let's use that generic term, let's call it an agent. So I can't wait until we, Booking Holdings and our companies, are offering up these personalized agents that are... They know everything about you, everything you want, and able to do so much more for you than any human travel agent could ever do because the machine never forgets anything. The machine has an infinite amount of permutation. It'll rapidly look through and choose what is the best thing, and it can go down and then back up. That doesn't work. Why? This doesn't fit that well. And can come back with. Now, people will always want some agency, so they make the decision themselves or at least confirm they want it. Most people are, for the most part, a complicated thing. They're gonna want it double-checked, they'll check with the family, whatever. Which is different than, say, a business person says, "I gotta go from New York to Chicago," and, you know, your assistant, your human assistant, right, is doing it for you. That's like an agent doing it for you and knows what flight you need and all that. That's great.

   6. SGSarah Guo17:29

      Yeah.

   7. GFGlenn Fogel17:29

      But when it's complicated, you want that agency. So we at Booking Holdings and all our companies, we are doing that right now. In fact, if you go to Penny, uh, uh, which is Priceline's AI, agentic AI, uh, system, and I just did it the other night. I put in a very complex, uh, need for a travel with the family where it was, uh, my wife and I, we want to go up in the front of the bus. I want the young adults who are adults but not paying, so I want them in the back of the bus. Uh, they're starting, so I got two cabins now. You know, w-one person has to go back to a different city. We're going to Europe. We're going to a city we're not, we're not actually doing the trip from that city where we're gonna land. How are we gonna get from one to the other? Should we have the hotel where we land and then travel the next day to the other city? Or should we go that night? How are we gonna do it? What restaurant? All the things. And I did it on Priceline Penny, and it was incredible. I also added in other things. I told it that, by the way, I got a lot of frequent flyer miles, so should I be using my miles, or should I use in cash, and for which ones? And it was just beautiful how it went back and forth and asked me questions like, "How many miles do you have with each airline?" And I'm giving it. And then we're going through the flight part and how much would it cost. And by the way, it ended up, as I expected, I'm using my miles for the upfront part for my wife and I. We're paying cash for the kids on the flight. We're gonna go to the hotel, um, in the city that we land in. The next day we're gonna get a shuttle. It's, well, it was wonderful.

   8. SGSarah Guo18:57

      Yeah. No, that's amazing. Yeah.

   9. GFGlenn Fogel18:58

      It was wonderful,

8. 18:59 – 22:46

   Agents, Token Economics, and ROI

   1. GFGlenn Fogel18:59

      and that's what we want even more so. Here's the real important thing is, when things go wrong, and things go wrong in travel, and nobody's fault many times, weather, mechanics, it happens, okay? You wanna have that one point of contact that can fix everything 'cause travel is like dominoes. One thing falls over, it all starts falling over. And that's the beauty with AI, being able to figure out, being able to look ahead, what can we do? My goal is to have a system that actually we are able to predict well enough what the problem will be before it happens, and suggest changing, fixing. I have so many examples of this, but I see the future coming.

   2. SGSarah Guo19:37

      I guess at a sort of generic level, 'cause, you know, your team on, on a call that we had pri-prior said that, uh, Penny adoption, which again is this, um, agentic tool that you built for Priceline, has doubled every month for the past, past few months, and it's, uh, generated a lift in conversion, plus faster search, shorter path to booking, lower cancellation, you know, higher customer success. So it seems like it's working in really interesting ways.

   3. GFGlenn Fogel20:00

      Uh.

   4. SGSarah Guo20:00

      Are there a common set of use cases that, you know, you think are most common for Penny? Are there, um, you know, specific things that it doesn't do well, that you just need the underlying models to get better for? I'm a little bit curious about-

   5. GFGlenn Fogel20:14

      Yeah. Well, the actual-- We have some areas where we're gonna be coming out with some new things on it. But here's something really important. So when you ask me the questions, Glenn, you say it's so great, but you tell me it's not really doing much, you know, the numbers don't really show up much in the numbers yet 'cause it's still really, really small in terms of the absolute number. We gotta talk scale here. You know, last year we did a hundred and eighty-six billion dollars worth of travel. That, that's a lot of travel. Okay?

   6. SGSarah Guo20:38

      Yeah. [laughs]

   7. GFGlenn Fogel20:38

      You know, we did over a billion room nights. So, you know, the actual numbers, somebody said, "Why?" Well, part of it is we're not pushing it really fully now. There's... One of the issues that I always wanna think about is what's the cost of this? And that's not so easy to understand. What is the cost, and that's what's developable of running it. How many tokens are we consuming here? Where? What, what-- Or how many times are they coming back and forth? What are we... Tell me how much was the cost of us getting that trip for that person, and what is our ROI going to be? Then the next thing is, well, what's the return long term gonna be in lifetime value? Do they come back? Are the loyalties up? Or what, how much, and will it change? These are things that we don't know yet that we're gonna have to continue to work on, develop so we know. And by the way, the whole thing of token economics now, which model should we be using for which purpose and when and stuff? And, uh, you know, obviously, you can get tokens a lot cheaper. Certain large to- different models can be a lot cheaper. And that's something that we have to look at very closely too. So it is fascinating that we can do things that I, I'm so thrilled that we do. I mean, for example, things like using customer service right now. Customer service, where we're using AI, it's, it's great. It happens much faster. You, you know, instead of having to staff your humans, and at peak times, somebody's got to wait for somebody to pick up. We've all been in that line, in that queue, waiting for somebody to pick up, and we hate it. But now with AI, [laughs] the, the computer can pick, pick it up. It's not a problem. And solve the problem even better and faster. You never will have in the future where you finally talk to a human, the human says, "I'm sorry. You'll have to be on hold again while I get somebody else who can solve that problem." Which you, by then you wanna throttle somebody. AI will solve that problem. But here's the question again about that is sometimes, though, you wanna figure out because people wanna talk to humans sometimes. You gotta balance that. 'Cause what you don't wanna do is end up, yeah, you can do it all AI, but actually, that's not what the customer

9. 22:46 – 25:23

   Booking’s Capital Investment Philosophy

   1. GFGlenn Fogel22:46

      wants. At the end-

   2. SGSarah Guo22:47

      Yeah

   3. GFGlenn Fogel22:47

      ... it's always what's best for the customer.

   4. SGSarah Guo22:49

      Yeah. That makes sense. And I, I think you said on your Q1 call that customer service costs are already down about ten percent.

   5. GFGlenn Fogel22:55

      Well, we are-

   6. SGSarah Guo22:55

      Um, per reservation and bookings are down about ten percent.

   7. GFGlenn Fogel22:57

      In the variance. Let's just go, let's go this, just this way.

   8. SGSarah Guo22:59

      Yeah.

   9. GFGlenn Fogel23:01

      Our costs for customer service per contact are down.

   10. SGSarah Guo23:05

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   11. GFGlenn Fogel23:07

       That's great. Customer satisfaction is up. That's even better.

   12. SGSarah Guo23:12

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   13. GFGlenn Fogel23:12

       But we have to make sure that we are able to always recognize some customers want a human being, and some customers are, you know-

   14. SGSarah Guo23:21

       Mm-hmm

   15. GFGlenn Fogel23:21

       ... the happiest could be just through AI.

   16. SGSarah Guo23:23

       Mm. Yeah. That makes sense. Uh, I mean, I, I think you also mentioned that you're investing something like five hundred and fifty million dollars of cost savings into AI and platform on that, on that same, uh, quarterly call. Where are you investing it, or where, where are you, uh, putting the brunt of that both capital and effort?

   17. GFGlenn Fogel23:39

       Yeah. So we, uh, and, and the amount we're investing is actually higher. Uh, uh, we talked about it. Seven hundred million, uh, approximately this year is being invested, but it's in many, many different areas, not just, you know, developing more AI, though AI it- there's definitely money going to call it tech enablement, but they're different projects, different areas. I would not put that all into and say, "Oh, you're investing in techno- all in, in AI." That's not correct. There are lots of areas that we're investing, and we talked to them on the call. That's not... What's important is the idea that, all right, you've got savings. You've got money. You've got cash flow. How much should you be putting in reinvesting in the company? How much should you be looking perhaps acquisitions? And how much should be handing back to shareholders? And that's always a balance, trying to figure out what's the right ratio, what is it. And it really is, the first thing is, do we believe investing in the company is gonna give a positive ROI that's sufficient to justify doing that? Or after that, are there acquisitions? And if you can't do either of those, then get the money back to the shareholders, 'cause they can then invest it better than you can. And that's what I've always believed in.

   18. SGSarah Guo24:48

       Mm-hmm. Makes a lot of sense. And I think you, you folks did something like a record $4 billion in Q1, um, in terms of buybacks and other sort of returns to investors, so.

   19. GFGlenn Fogel24:57

       You know, it, and what... It, I really am very proud of the fact that over the last, let's say, dozen years or so, we've bought back approximately 40% of the outstanding shares. That's good. And we offer a dividend. We have a nice dividend. So in the fourth quarter was, we bought back $3.6 billion worth of stock. We gave out, uh, approximately, you know, over $300 million in, uh, a dividend. And

10. 25:23 – 29:40

    Scale as Durable Asset

    1. GFGlenn Fogel25:23

       in addition, we also were paying for the taxes for the, uh, equity grants that vested, and you had to, you know, pay the taxes. Uh, we do it by with- withholding shares that were part of invest. That's another $300 million or so. So a lot of money making sure it's going back to the shareholders if we don't think that we can use it, uh, properly ourselves. That's, I, uh, I really mo- And this comes me from an investment banking background, maybe back then or maybe trading, where companies that just build up huge amounts of cash, and they're not doing anything with it, and they're not giving it back to the shareholders or the like. That doesn't seem like the right thing.

    2. SGSarah Guo26:01

       I think, um, one last thing that you, that you mentioned earlier, one thing that you mentioned earlier that I thought was really important is just the scale of your business, and I think it's a, at enormous scale, and that's kind of underappreciated as an asset. And so as an example, and you closed 2025 with what I believe is 8.6 million alternative accommodation listings, so that's, uh, people listing homes or rooms or other things for rentals. It could be a variety of different types of, uh, of spots. Uh, but that creates a really interesting, I think, durable asset. So, you know, I feel like people overstate sometimes how AI is gonna transform certain businesses. It's obviously gonna be transforming everything, but there are also things that are very hard to build and that are very durable in the long run, that if you have an agent that's gonna go and book a, an alternative accommodation with you because you have all of them listed, right, you have the marketplace built. Are there other aspects of your business that you view as especially durable going into this era?

    3. GFGlenn Fogel26:53

       So on that one, it, it, it is a good point. I think you're right, but I think it's underappreciated by some people, probably I'd say Americans, because in the alternative accommodations area, obviously the big player is someone who invested in very early, Airbnb. Congratulations, good work on your part. Um, but a lot of people don't recognize that globally, when you look at our amount of listings and you look at Airbnb, it's not that different. And even more so is when you look at our total amount of transactions on room night for alternative accommodations, you look at what, you see that we are approximately three-quarters the size of Airbnb, and that's just our alternative accommodation area. We have a whole much bigger hotel business on top of that. And, and, you know, over the last five years we've been growing. For the last five years, we've grown faster than Airbnb in the alternative accommodation area. We do it like to like. We've been growing faster the last five years and stuff. It's a great product, great thing. It's growing very well. Your question though, does that give us an advantage, so to speak, against somebody who comes in, all they're doing is creating a nice AI agentic-type system, and how are you gonna get the connectivity to these players or not? And I'll say there is no such thing as a moat. There is no such thing as somewhere you're gonna be, uh, protected against innovation. And that's what I try and get across to the team. We've got 25,000 employees, and I try and get this across to everybody that every day we've got to be fighting. And yeah, today we have a competitive advantage in some areas, absolutely, but that's gonna go away tomorrow. The only way to win, the only way to win long term is to continue to develop new services, new ways to do things, come up with this agentic travel assistant that I want, this universally that will make it so much better, and that's the only way. And working on the other side, by the way, also very important, with the partners, employees, that we're helping them. A lot, again, a lot of people don't understand the complexity involved. It's not just getting the inventory loaded into some database. Anybody can do that. That's nothing. We got thousands of people who are dealing with hotels and other property managers. How can we do your business better? What do you need? Where you need more demand? Where are you hurting? What can we do to improve your systems better? It's so much more complex than I believe many other people who look at this industry from afar. And what secondly is, and this is something that really people don't understand, is the regulatory framework around the world. Dealing with travel is a very highly regulated... Now, it's not a bank, okay, got it, and it's not an airplane, you know, airline such that, or it's, you know, not drug disco-

11. 29:40 – 33:18

    Purpose and Choosing Wisely

    1. GFGlenn Fogel29:40

       but it is very regulated, and it's complex, and you've gotta meet it. And if you wanna be merchant of record in travel, you gotta adhere to a whole bunch of rules, et cetera. And by the way, around the world, much more than the US, around the world, those regulations are increasing. I won't necessarily say exponentially, but let's say they're increasing. That too is something that if you're big, at scale, you can afford to deal with that. And if you think you're just gonna come in and do this business and knock away these very big players, I'd say you should really understand what the business is before you decide to commit your capital.

    2. SGSarah Guo30:19

       So I, I guess, um, if you reflect on life or you reflect on things looking forward, 'cause, I mean, you've had an incredible run Right. And, uh, the run is by no means over, you know, you still have so much stuff you're working on and doing. [laughs]

    3. GFGlenn Fogel30:31

       Well, no, in fact, I think we're just at the start. No, see, this is... I tell everybody-

    4. SGSarah Guo30:35

       Yeah, I know. It's-

    5. GFGlenn Fogel30:36

       ... this is the most exciting time ever, ever, because of the ability to build these new things.

    6. SGSarah Guo30:41

       Yeah. I, I, I agree. I mean, I think this is a transformative moment-

    7. GFGlenn Fogel30:44

       Totally

    8. SGSarah Guo30:45

       ... uh, in terms of just technology and the world and society and everything else. And, you know, it's so exciting to be in the middle of all this, and obviously you all are playing a really prominent role in one aspect of that, or a key aspect. Um, you know, you, you joined, uh, Priceline, to your point, when it was in the hundreds of millions. The stock is now, you know, $130 billion-plus company. It was 180 earlier in the year. I'm sure it'll go back there over time, given, you know, all the things we're working on, fingers crossed. Um-

    9. GFGlenn Fogel31:06

       If we do what we're supposed to do

    10. SGSarah Guo31:08

        ... how do you think about just, like, what you hope to accomplish more broadly in life, or how... what is the right measure of a person or, you know, of an outcome or of the next few years or... I'm just sort of curious because I, you know, we, we chatted very briefly earlier, and I, I felt like you're somebody who's thought deeply about more than just, you know, how will I drive bookings for us, although obviously you think about that quite a bit. I, I'm just sort of curious, like, you know, uh, what is the right, uh, measure in general that you're measuring yourself against, or how you're thinking about the next couple years?

    11. GFGlenn Fogel31:41

        Yeah. Well, uh, look, uh, I am... I'm very blessed. I've been very lucky in my life that I'm in a position that I could pretty much do what I'd like to do. And sometimes people ask me, "Why do you continue doing what you're doing?" And I say, "Because I think, I think being part of this is doing something good." And yeah, we're not curing cancer, I know that, but I think that travel is a very important thing for a lot of people. It really adds to their, their lives. You know, we can do it better. Look, our mission is to make it easier for everybody to experience the world, and I believe that does improve everybody. It improves the world by getting people to travel more, experience other cultures, other people, et cetera. And if we can do it right and make it easier, that's great. I wanna be part. I wanna help do that. I do believe that's adding something. And, you know, that's part of the... everybody needs to understand, I believe, why are you doing what you're doing? You only get one life. You get one life. Now, sometimes people don't have choices at all. That's the only job they have, and they need to afford to be able to support their family. I got that. I'm, I'm, I believe that. Um, I know that. Um, but for people, you know, who have a little bit of ability to choose, I'd say choose wisely. Choose wisely, because you will not get that time back. And some people have different ideas of what will they believe their life should be, and that whatever it is, as long as you're f- going that path, that's great. My biggest fear too much is people who've taken paths that in the end, they're middle-aged or later, and they're a little bit wistful

12. 33:18 – 36:38

    AI’s Impact on Jobs

    1. GFGlenn Fogel33:18

       about, "Gee, I wonder if I'd done X." And I'll be perfectly honest and, uh, well, I hope to... not too many of my, my law school classmates hear this, I hope, but I fear that too many of them, they chose going to law school 'cause that was just kinda like a path, and then they became lawyers just 'cause, you know, that's normally what you do when you come out of law school, become a lawyer. I didn't, but many people did, and then it paid really well, and it was easy and their comfort zone. And then they're, you know, later in life, it's kind of like, "Gee, what did I do?" And that's what I think everybody should really think hard about, making sure you choose wisely.

    2. SGSarah Guo33:58

       You know, one thing we've talked about quite a bit is the AI impact on jobs and, you know, there's this claimed jobs apocalypse and all these other things coming. Um, would love to hear your views on that and how you think about that.

    3. GFGlenn Fogel34:08

       So it is really interesting. I mean, we take it in terms of the general sense of technology meaning job replacement.

    4. SGSarah Guo34:17

       Mm-hmm.

    5. GFGlenn Fogel34:18

       That's something that's happened forever. We, well, look at the way the agrarian societies went more towards urbanization as technology advanced, industrial revolution. We can go through anything like that, and so we know that happens. The issue that's really interesting, though, is the speed of the change. So if you look right now where we are, I've seen it happen over my time just at this company. So at the beginning of the company, we were dealing at Booking.com or-

    6. SGSarah Guo34:47

       Mm-hmm

    7. GFGlenn Fogel34:47

       ... we acquired Booking.com. They were doing hotel reservations in over 40 languages, which meant all the content, all the descriptions, everything was in 40 languages-

    8. SGSarah Guo34:58

       Mm-hmm

    9. GFGlenn Fogel34:58

       ... and the same type of service, 40 languages, all that is wonderful. And there were a lot of people involved in that because all the translation is now-

    10. SGSarah Guo35:05

        Mm.

    11. GFGlenn Fogel35:05

        .. in the old days, it's like 2005, all the translations are being done by human beings. There is no machine translation at all at the time. And all those customer service human beings, we had to have people in all these 40 different languages and that.

    12. SGSarah Guo35:19

        Mm-hmm.

    13. GFGlenn Fogel35:19

        That was a big deal. Now, now we have machine translations. All those jobs are gone. There's nobody doing any of that. That's... those, all those jobs disappear. So what happened to those people? Where'd they go? What jobs are they now taking? What are they doing instead? So that's an example where we see that happen in real time. And now we have the issue not only of that, but now the fear of, well, will I get a job coming out of university? 'Cause all, all the jobs seem to be gone because what was necessary was an analyst at a financial department at a, as a bank or a big corporation, those jobs now being done through basically AI. So those jobs aren't there. So what's going, how's it gonna play? Now we know also the other side, that new jobs are gonna be created. We all know that also by history looking back. The problem is-

    14. SGSarah Guo36:06

        Mm-hmm

    15. GFGlenn Fogel36:06

        ... the speed of job disappearance and new job creation, those rates are not happening probably at the same rate. And the second thing is, what about the people who are not able to make that change?

    16. SGSarah Guo36:20

        Mm.

    17. GFGlenn Fogel36:20

        So I think... well, I always think about... the typical person I think about is a 50-something-year-old truck driver.

    18. SGSarah Guo36:26

        Mm-hmm.

    19. GFGlenn Fogel36:26

        And when the person who was making a very nice living- They felt very good about themselves because he or she is driving an 18-wheeler across the US, and they're responsible, helping contribute to a job.

13. 36:38 – 38:36

    Upskilling in the AI Era

    1. GFGlenn Fogel36:38

       And now all of a sudden that's completely automated.

    2. SGSarah Guo36:42

       Mm-hmm.

    3. GFGlenn Fogel36:42

       They're out of a job. What are we gonna... How are we gonna retrain that per- that person? That person's gonna feel really bad, and we've seen in society how these type of large dislocations have caused problems in the past when you look at that.

    4. SGSarah Guo36:57

       Mm-hmm.

    5. GFGlenn Fogel36:57

       And I, I c- I'm concerned that there's not enough thought being done about how are we going to deal with these changes-

    6. SGSarah Guo37:04

       Mm-hmm

    7. GFGlenn Fogel37:04

       ... if they happen too quickly or not. Society as a whole absolutely, uh, uh, it's always benefited from technology and creative-

    8. SGSarah Guo37:11

       Mm-hmm

    9. GFGlenn Fogel37:11

       ... and being able to do more things. But we have to wonder how are we going to deal with the flip side, the costs that come with it?

    10. SGSarah Guo37:18

        Do you have a, do you have a specific viewpoint or proposal in terms of what we should be doing there?

    11. GFGlenn Fogel37:22

        Well, I'll tell you one thing that we do here at our company. One thing that we're always doing is trying to upskill people. I am... I'd say every day I'm talking with my head of AI, my CSR or my head of, you know, how can we do the best training? How can we get people so they are ready for the future? How do we get them so they are become AI literate? There's probably a word that means, I don't know what it means, that, AI, be able to do AI. And that's really important because even if we end up that we can't replace or retrain or put someone else, at least they are better skilled for a job somewhere else, and I feel a real obligation for that. Now, that's, that's our point of view. I think everybody should be thinking that way, too. It's good for our company. It's a positive on our life for somebody to be able to use new tools in a better way. [laughs] They're more productive. That's great. It's good, but it also helps them for their career. Now, sometimes I can see somebody in short term saying, "I don't wanna spend the money for that." And it's not the right way to think about it. Now, we could have governments coming in with certain types of programs trying to come up with ways, but retraining by governments over the last 50 years really hasn't worked out so well. So I'm not sure that's the right way to go either. But I do believe this is something that I really would like to hear more conversation

14. 38:36 – 40:24

    Public Perception of AI

    1. GFGlenn Fogel38:36

       about how to do it because I do, I am concerned if we end up in a situation where people will start rejecting technology because of fear. That would end up being bad for us as society, and by the way, other parts of the world are not gonna have that problem, and they will be disadvantaged. I assure you, when in China, they're, they are not having that same thing about, "Oh, AI is bad and we shouldn't do it." That is not what's happening there. So I really think we gotta talk honestly and openly so we have the right conversation and to not end up on the bad side of people coming out and rejecting what actually are gonna be good for society.

    2. SGSarah Guo39:15

       That makes sense. Yeah. It's interesting, too, because I know that, um, I know at least one group that has rerun consumer surveys on AI because there's this claim right now that people are very negative on AI, and it turns out it depends on what the question you ask is.

    3. GFGlenn Fogel39:28

       What is the-

    4. SGSarah Guo39:29

       If you ask people, "Do you love, you know, using ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude and all that?" They're like, "We love it, and we'll pay more for it, and it's wonderful, and it's helping our lives in all these different ways. We're helping our kids with school," or whatever it is. Then if you ask them, "Are you worried that AI will come and destroy your life and take your job and ruin your career and blah?" And then of course people are like, "I don't like it." And so I think the, the questions are being asked a certain way on purpose, and I think to your point, we need to be level-headed and say, "Okay, what's the real implication for different areas of the economy? How do we make sure that people benefit overall, and how do we make sure that people can participate?" And that's very different from, you know, taking a pure doomer view or taking a pure sort of negative view on what's coming. So, you know, appreciate your perspective on that and-

    5. GFGlenn Fogel40:09

       Yeah, you're, you're so right. And, and part of the problem is in a democracy, which we have, which I'm in favor of, you'll have people who are saying certain things because it might not seem what they believe, but people even give them a vote, and that's also problematic

15. 40:24 – 41:03

    Conclusion

    1. GFGlenn Fogel40:24

       in any... Look, I'm in favor of democracy, but I'd be in favor of people be a little bit more honest [laughs] about what they're saying.

    2. SGSarah Guo40:30

       Yeah, yeah. What's their real purpose? Yeah, 100%.

    3. GFGlenn Fogel40:32

       Yeah.

    4. SGSarah Guo40:32

       Thank you so much for joining today. Really appreciate, um, you know, y- uh, you sharing your various views across all these topics. It's been really great chatting with you.

    5. GFGlenn Fogel40:39

       Well, thank you, and congratulations on all things that you've accomplished. It, it's pretty impressive. [upbeat music]

    6. SPSpeaker40:47

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Episode duration: 41:04