NEW YORK CITY — At the Skift Global Forum, held in Manhattan this week, leaders from two online travel brands shared their perspectives on the rapid evolution of technology in travel and what’s on the horizon.
Glenn Fogel, CEO and president of Booking Holdings—parent company of Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK and OpenTable—recalled how the company launched just as the dot-com bubble burst. When Dennis Schaal, founding and executive editor at Skift, asked the CEO if he expects a similar burst for AI technology, Fogel demured. “If it's a good company, it can produce something that is great,” he said, and acknowledged that not all tech companies would survive with “crazy” valuations. “But what's being built is technology that will absolutely change every part of society, and we will be better for it.”
Booking Holdings’ brands have begun to incorporate AI technology into their operations, he continued. For example, OpenTable uses Salesforce’s AI technology for some of its customer-service functions, which Fogel said has provided “significant benefits” for the company. “We are seeing concrete benefits, real numbers that show the benefits for some of these technologies,” he said.
Fogel also noted the growth of agentic AI, a more independent version of artificial intelligence that can complete complex tasks without step-by-step instructions from the user. This type of technology can help streamline travel by connecting all the different suppliers for different components of the trip. With agentic AI, instead of getting a text message from an airline that a flight has been delayed, he said a traveler would get a message that the flight has been delayed so the hotel has been alerted of the new arrival time and the restaurant reservations have been adjusted. “At the end of the day, it's a very competitive world, and if we're not providing a better service to the person, somebody else is going to do it,” he said.
If You Can’t Beat Them…
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky joined the conference remotely to discuss how his company is expanding its reach and collaborating with traditional hotels.
In recent years, the platform has added bookable Services and Experiences in addition to rooms. These can include spa experiences or private chefs who visit the rental. “The vast majority of guests on Airbnb have told us that they would buy a service if it was offered to them as part of an attachment to a trip,” Chesky told Skift Founder and CEO Rafat Ali. “We also found that one of the top reasons that people stay in hotels and not homes is because hotels have services that Airbnbs typically do not have.”
As such, the Airbnb leaders saw “a huge opportunity, not only to have a multibillion-dollar revenue expansion line, but also to get people that would otherwise stay in a hotel to stay in Airbnb.” Notably, Chesky said that many people booking these services and experiences are locals in the destinations. “I do think that a bit more of our business is going to be local use.”
While Airbnb has long been viewed as a competitor of traditional hotels, the team found that when people could not find a home that they liked in their desired destination, they would book a traditional hotel. As such, the company has started working with hoteliers, adding boutique and independent properties to its platform. “They like our 15.5 percent commission—it's the lowest in the industry,” Chesky said of the hoteliers who have put their properties on the platform. And particularly in Europe, he said, hoteliers are eager to attract outbound American travelers. “We have high-income travelers that are American and they're young.”
Acknowledging that competition between traditional hotels and home-sharing platforms will probably continue, Chesky suggested that platforms like Airbnb could adapt to meet travelers’ needs. “There's a lot of room, and I think there's an entire market segment of people that aren't really being served—or not being served properly,” he said. “We can serve them through collecting the very best boutiques, the very best independents [and] building a first-class Airbnb interface to be able to see these hotels, see these inns, see these bed and breakfasts.”