No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups - Travel Through the Lens of AI with with Booking.com CEO Glenn Fogel

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

When Glenn Fogel joined Priceline in 2000, the business was worth a few hundred million dollars. One week later, the Nasdaq peaked, eventually sending its stock down to a dollar a share. But over 25 years later, Booking Holdings has scaled over 1000x into an over $100 billion dollar global travel behemoth. Elad Gil is joined by Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel to discuss his career, from law school and Wall Street to working at Priceline through the dot-com crash, and to helping grow the business into a multifaceted, dynamic travel marketplace in the AI era. Glenn explains how leveraging AI and agents such as Priceline’s ‘Penny’ makes travel planning and customer service better, while emphasizing the importance of preserving some human support for some users. He also talks about Booking’s strategy of reinvesting over $700 million into AI and other technologies while still offering stock buybacks and dividends, the durability of their scale and complexities of dealing with a large portfolio physical properties across the world, and why upskilling is so important for employees amid concerns about AI-driven job displacement.      Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to [e-mail] Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @bookingcom | @priceline Chapters: 00:00 – Cold Open 00:05 – Glenn Fogel Introduction 00:41 – Glenn’s Early Career 06:49 – Lessons from the Early Internet 09:24 – Deciding Factors for Exiting 10:56 – Travel Through the Lens of AI 13:30 – Agentic Travel Planning  18:59 – Agents, Token Economics, and ROI 22:46 – Booking’s Capital Investment Philosophy 25:23 – Scale as Durable Asset 29:40 – Purpose and Choosing Wisely 33:18 – AI’s Impact on Jobs 36:38 – Upskilling in the AI Era 38:36 – Public Perception of AI 40:24 – Conclusion

There is no such thing as a moat. There is no such thing. And it's something where 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 one to 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 not go away, these very big players, I'd say you should really understand what the business is before you decide to commit your capital. Today in our 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 price line and worth a few hundred million dollars in the year 2000, and has since helped grow it to a hundred billion-dollar-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 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. Well, thank you very much for having me. Yeah.

So you've had a really interesting career. You know, you went to Wharton, you went to Harvard Law, along the way you worked in, I think, the MIS program at Morgast. I'd love to just hear a lot about your early background. and how that led you eventually to booking.com and eventually booking holdings. Yeah, I can do that. So, real short, I came out at war with Green Finance. I now end up the back office in MIS. My first job is putting tapes on a drive in a data center of IBM 384s

and the disc that went in the tape drives and putting the tapes on the drive. That's where I started. There's an operator, actually being an operator of a mainframe. very different, nothing that you prepared for that in college for that. And I then become a developer. And I basically learned that this is not a career for me. I should do something else. And all the people I knew undergrad at Warren were going off to invest in bank and made all this money.

And I thought, you should try to do that. But you can't go. I've now gone down one shoot. And you can't just jump out of that one to go come and invest in a banker. says, oh, I got a degree to finance horn, and Harvard let me in the law school. So I'll do that because that's another route. I did that. And I end up getting a job on Wall Street.

That's a banker. I did that until 95, until 1995. And then the bank was bought by another bank, and they fired all the bankers almost. Not everybody. They fired most, including me. But not everybody, because they fired everybody because they fired everybody. Well, they fired everybody. But they didn't fire everybody.

So there was actually some people were picked to stay. That was not one of them. That 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 and how do it wrong and understand what goes to the other person when you tell them that I'm sorry. But there's no longer a room for you here. It's not the place for you to be. I really learned that firsthand being on that side of the table. And so now I'm unemployed

And my father It just died Not that long before this happens And my father's died, lost the job My grandmother died And even the dog died I'm just kind of sad And I'm like, what do I want to do with my life now

My young 30s, I belong I'm saying or whatever And I say, you know I always want to write a book So I start writing a book I write a novel I get it done And now I'm going to try and get it published

and it's not really self-publishing. You're doing on your own. You're trying to get some agent to pick it up. And I was introduced to a woman as a blind date for a friend. I think she was a lawyer, but I don't know. They said, well, she used to work at Random House as an editor. I said, ooh, I'm very interested in. And so we have a date, and the book never gets published.

I do end up marrying her and have two great kids. There's a wonderful light. 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 was going to go forward, you should get a job. I said, I didn't want to go back to banking. And I said, I know, and a friend of mine from law school was a senior type person at Morgan Stanley. And I told him, look, Amy says, I have to get a job. She's how he thought.

She said, well, we have this trading position here that you could do. I've never traded anything in my life. Is that, don't worry, you'll be fine. It's like, okay. So I end up being head trader for a guy named boss. Martin Bay is kind of out of Wall Street Ledge and stuff. I do that for a number of years. But I just don't like it.

It's not that exact. 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 in 1999, I started trying to interview and I'll think, well, I got some skills. But when I was an IT person, I got that. And I know a little bit about corporate development because being with us a banker.

And I started interviewing the only. real company on the East Coast at the time of Internet, you know, abilities was price line. And they had a job for corporate development. Like, perfect. So again, an offer from that. I said, I want to wait. I want to wait until I get my bonus for 1999. We get paid at the end of February 2000.

So I go and I get my bonus check. 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. But then that big peaked and stuff. And they proved, though, I shouldn't be a trader, having just an absolute wrong way. And, you know, price line has its difficulties after that. Our stock went from where we were, when we went public, 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, you know, a few months after the IPO, I joined, we're 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. And our stock is now trading at a dollar a share. We're going to get the ULISC, because it's dropping below 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. I stay and now I'll be there on my 27th year. Wow. And we went from that, that now reverse. split $6, and in last summer, we came very close to $6,000. Wow. Yeah.

You know, a little more a quarter of a century, up a thousand times. And, you know, market cap was peaked around 180 billion. Remember, it's a few hundred million. Yeah, that's amazing. It's been a good ride so far, but of course, you never stop. Every day's a new adventure. Every day's, you got a big headline in the FT when I interview with it. I said, got to fight for a customer.

How do you think about the lessons from that internet era in terms of the current AI wave? Because we're seeing this massive shift in market cap. You think like this is a pre-made explosion of new things, have all these, come, everything, just like in the late 90, the optimism of technology. Everything is going to be wonderful. But then you get a little bit of the backlash coming with the backlash then too. And now, it's just, it's just, it's just,

It's just bigger than it was there. The numbers are much bigger. The issues in hand are much bigger. The plus and the minuses. So I do see a lot of parallels. Yeah. Because, you know, when I look at it right now, some companies clearly have enormous revenue bases,

you know, Open AI and Anthroprored are rumored to have 30 to $50 billion in revenue run rate each. And, you know, in parallel, you see companies that are extremely highly valued, 10 billion, etc., 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 when public before that. So, you had 1,500 companies of which, what, two dozen are left at most? 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? And those are IPOs, by the way.

Those are the very strongest or perceived to be strongest companies, right? Right. Well, I wouldn't want to 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 booms. And, you know, if we go over the last 150 years, there always been these kind of springing further back. Yeah. There are speculative booms that create tremendous innovation. coming in just 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 going to be great. I was sure there were a lot of companies selling, you know, axes and cameras. Detroit Auto Boom, same thing. Yeah, you know, I've seen this before. And how many of them? So I don't know, but I think this is not new. And there'll be a great deal of disappointment.

There'll be a lot of people who are going to lose a lot of money, of course. That's just the nature. power coming to work and when their respective bubbles, that will bring out a lot, but that doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of companies. It's actually a real diet and aren't going to me. How do you think 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 kind of like, okay, price line 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. But in today's

era, there's quite a few options in terms of exit. Should people mainly be thinking about exiting right now, do you think? Do you think they should keep going? Yeah, I think that's right. I don't think we can give a rule without knowing what the facts of that specific situation are. By the way, there were times early in the day where probably say it would have been happy somebody made an offer. It really depends a lot of what the situation is, how confident is managed, and for people who have put the that there is going to be a culture and how concerned about you. What are you trying to do? You're trying to accomplish something.

The goal is to actually make something matters or are you just here to make money? And nothing wrong with that. I'm not against that. You've got to understand what is your motivations. What are you trying to achieve? We have on average, if you're American male for help it. I think that's when I have a 78-year expected lifespan when you're born. of course, the longer you live, the higher of it, whatever it is, and how are you going to spend those

years? What is important to you? What's the meaning to it? And I'll let the people who are actually in the almost situations. I would not go and not get them. A general advice. Excellent. So, I mean, back to booking, you know, one of the categories that you all obviously are really crucial to is travel. And there's a number of the next gen sort of AI companies who've started experimenting with things like Open AI. had checkout and chat GPT and one of the 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 do you think didn't work there? What do you think, how do you think people should think about travel through the lens of AI? So I think we should back up a little bit so everybody to understand what's going on here.

So in any type of situation, you'll have people who are not that knowledgeable about industry or about how things actually happen in the business. And so from the outside, it looks rather easy to, oh, this easy AI will take care of travel and all the travel companies won't be worthwhile, won't be worth anything. And that was why companies like ourselves took a big head as some of the new models were dropped that had a much better way of doing agent in commerce as so was perceived. at the time. And then when people make analysis,

we're not going to do that. Like when Open AI said we're not playing to be a merchant record trying to, or we're not even going to keep in this app type of way of doing commerce. We're not doing it. Then people say, oh, well, that, I was wrong. I'm not going to worry about it as much. It puts 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, cheaper, and better for our customers, all businesses. What is the purpose of a business?

A business is to do something of value to its customers. We have two kinds of customers. We've got travelers and we've got partners. We are in the middle of that for a marketplace. How can we do it better? A.I, particularly AI using large language models and other things like that can help make it a much more valuable 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 chat TV, you know, you're no longer having one method. I wouldn't be too much into that one way or the other. Yeah, that makes sense. You know, it's interesting because I'm in the middle of Silicon Valley where people are very AGI-I-pilled, right? People strongly believe that AI will drive all's weird. of things that in some cases it will, and in some cases it'll take longer, and some cases it won't. It reminds me a little bit of crypto where crypto was going to solve everything and it didn't, but it was very important for certain aspects of the financial system.

And I think stable points 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 to do customer support. But it's also the larger platforms like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc., providing increasingly self-driven systems, Kodaks or Cloud Co-work or some of the things

Feminize doing. And one of the arguments people are making is that the nature of UI is going to change and you're going to have agents doing transactions on your behalf in sourcing things like trips or figuring out your travel

attenary for you or buying or purchasing the actual different aspects of travel. A, do you think that's a correct vision of the world and B, do you think or how do you view that interacting with booking and what you all provide as a service? So again, we want to reduce this to understanding what does the customer want.

Many people would travel find a very frustrating. I know that we all travel and find very frustrating. Trying to put together a complicated trip with a family that's saying multiple destinations, different things you want to do. It's complex and it's pain. You start planning it and then you stop because it's too. what's a thing. And everybody would like something else. Many people would like something 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, not and have a lot of it to the hard work for them.

People aren't quite a net in a wealth zone. They'll have their partner or their spouse trying to do it for them. I'll be perfectly honest. I'm exposing myself here about saying, okay? My wife and I sometimes argue about, okay, who's going to have to do it? do all the travel, this trip, because it can be frustrating and it's sad. Now, with AI,

the beauty is, it's going to make it so much easier and it's doing it right now, we're 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 in 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 assuming travel agent could ever do because the machine never forgets anything. The machine has an infinite amount of permutation and 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 with it. 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 point, to complicate anything. They don't want it's double-track. They'll check the fan or whatever. which is different than, say, a business person says,

I got to go from New York to Chicago, and your assistant, your human assistant, my own doing it for you. That's like an agent, doing it for you. And knows what you need and all that. That's great. But when it's complicated, you want that agency. So we are booking, holding all our companies.

We are doing that right now. In fact, if you go to Penny, which is price lines, a gigantic AI system, and I just did it the other night, I put in a very complex need for a travel with the family where it was my wife and I, we want to go up in front of the bus. I want the young adults who are adults, but I'm paying, so I want them in the back of the bus.

They're starting, so I've got two cabins now. One person has to go back to a different city. We're going to Europe, going to a city. We're not actually doing the trip from that city where we're going to land, how we're going to get from one together. 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 going to do it?

What restaurant? All the things. And I did it on price line, penny. And it was incredible. I also added in other things. I told it that, by the way, I got a lot of frequent wire miles. So should I be used by miles or should I use it cash and for which ones? And it was just beautiful how it went back and forth and asked me questions.

How many miles do you have with each airline? Now I'm giving it. And then we're going through the flight part and how much of the cost. By the way, as I expected. I'm using my miles for the upfront part for my wife and all. We're paying cash for the kids on the flights. We're going to go to the hotel in the city that we land in. The next day, we're going to get a shelf.

It's wonderful. Yeah, that's very good. And that's what we want even more. So here's a real core thing is when things go wrong and things go wrong and travel, nobody's full many times. Weather mechanics, it happens, okay? You want to have that one point of contact. that can fix everything because travel is like dominoes.

One thing falls over and it all starts falling over. And that's the beauty with AIB or figure out being a 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 be before it happens. And so just changing fix it. I have so many examples of this, but I see the future on me. I guess at a sort of generic level,

because your team on a call that we had prior said that Penny adoption, which again is this agentic tool that you develop for price line has doubled every month for the past few months. And it's generated a lifting conversion plus faster search or a path to booking, lower cancellation, you know, higher customer success. So it seems like it's working in really interesting ways. Are there a common set of use cases that, you know, you think are most common for penny? Are there, you know, specific things that it doesn't do well that you just need the underlying models, get better for them, a little bit curious.

Well, the actual, we need to have some areas where we're coming out with some new things on it. But here's something's really important. So only asked me the crisis. When you say it's so great. But you tell me, it's not really doing much, you know, the numbers that really show up much of the numbers yet. It's so really, really small in terms of the absolute number.

We got to talk scale here. You know, last year, we did $186 billion with the travel. That's a lot of travel. You know, we did over a billion of room rights. So, you know, the actual number is really so there's a lot. Well, part of it is we're not pushing it really fully now. There's one of the issues that I always want to think about is what's the cost of us. And that's not the reason to understand.

What is the cost? And that's what's developed of running it. How many tokens are we consuming here? Where? Well, how many times are they coming back and forth and we're doing? Tell me how much was the cost of us getting that trip for that person and what is our ROI going to be? And the next thing is, well, what's the return long term? would it be lifetime value.

Do they come back? The loyalties up, but what, how much, and will it change? These are things that we don't know yet that we're going to have to do. You need to work on developed when we know. And by the way, the whole thing of token in economics now, which model should we be using for which purpose and when and stuff?

And obviously, you can get tokens a lot cheaper. It's 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'm so thrilled that we do. I think, for example, things like using customer service right now, customer service where we're using AI, it's great. It happens much faster.

Instead of having to staff your humans, and at peak time, somebody's got to wait for somebody to pick up. We've all been in that line in that queue. Wait if somebody to pick up, we hate it. But now with AI, the computer can 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 the human the human says i'm sorry you'll have to be at hold again while i get somebody else who can solve that problem which he's right then you want to thwartle somebody

and yeah i will solve that problem but here's a question again about that is sometimes though you want to figure out because people want to talk to human sometimes you got to balance that because what you don't want to do is end up yeah You can do it all AI, but actually that's not what the customer want. At the end, it's always what's best for the customer. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think you said on your Q1 call, the customer service costs are already down about 10% for reservation. Let's look, let's go with this. Our costs for customer service per contact are down.

That's great. Customer satisfaction is up. That's even better. But we have to make sure that we are able to always recognize some customers wanting your being. And some customers are, you know, the happiest could be to AI. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think you also mentioned that you're investing something like $550 million

of cost savings into AI and platform on that same early call. Where are you investing it or where are you putting the brunt of that, both capital and effort? Yeah, so we, and the amount of investment is actually higher. We talked about 700 million approximately this year is being invested, but it's in many, many different areas, not just, you know, developing more AI, though AI, there's definitely money going to call it tech enablement, but there's different projects, different areas. I would not put that all into a, say, oh, you're investing in technology in AI.

That's not correct. There are lots of areas of investment. We talked to them on the call. So that's not what's important is the idea that, but you've got savings, you've got money, you've got cash flow. How much should you be putting in reinvesting in a 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 white ratio, what is it really is the first thing is, do we believe investing in the company? It's going to give a positive ROI that's sufficient to justify doing that.

after that, all their acquisitions. And if you can't do either of those, then get the money back to the shareholders because they can then invest it better than you can. And that's what I've always believed in. It makes a lot of sense. And I think you folks did something like a record $4 billion in Q1 in terms of buybacks and other sort of returns to investors. You know, I really am very proud of the fact that over the last, let's say,

a dozen years ago, we've bought back a price. approximately 40% of the outstanding share. That's good. And we offer a dividend. We have a nice dividend. So in the fourth quarter, it was we bought back $3.6 billion for the stock. We gave out approximately, you know, over $300 million in a dividend. And in addition, we also were paying for the taxes for the equity grants that vested in.

You know, paying the tax. We do it by withholding the shares that part of the best. That's another $300 million or something. So, anyway, a lot of money, making sure it's going back to the shareholders, if we don't think that we can use it properly ourselves. That's really my whole. And this company in front of this in 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 of the line. It doesn't seem like the right thing. I think one last thing that you mentioned earlier, one thing that you mentioned earlier that I thought was really important is just a scale of your business. And I think it's at an enormous scale and that's kind of underappreciated as an asset. And so as an example, and you close 2025 with what I believe is $8.6 million alternative accommodation listing. So that's people listing homes or rooms or other things for rentals.

It could be a variety of different types of spots. But that creates a really interesting, I think, durable asset. So, you know, I feel like people overstate sometimes how AI is going to transform certain businesses. It's obviously going to 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, it's going to go and book an alternative accommodation with you because you have all them listed, right? You have the marketplace built.

Are there other aspects of your business that you've used especially durable going into this era? So on that one, it is a good point. I think you're right. I think it's underappreciated by some people. probably, I'd say Americans, because in the alternative accommodations area, obviously, a big player is

someone who invested in very early Airbean congratulations, we'll look on your part. But a lot of you 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, our room night for all total economy, you look at all, you see that we are approximately three quarters the size of Airbnb, and that's just our alternative accommodation. We have the whole much bigger hotel business at top of that. 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 like to light.

We've been growing faster the last five years. It's a great product. It's going very well. Your question, though, does that give us an advantage, sort of speak, against somebody who comes in? All they're doing is creating a nice thing. AI, a Tentive type system and how are you going to 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. And it's something where you're going to be protected against innovation. And that's what I try and get across to the team. I've got 25,000 points. And I try and get this across to everybody. Every day we've got to be fighting. And yeah, 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, come up with this, eugenic travel assistant that I want. There's universally that will make it so much better. That's the only way. And working on the other side, by the way, also very important with the partners, that we're helping them. A lot again, a lot of people to understand the complexity involved.

It's not just getting the inventory, lowered it into some database. anybody can do that. That's nothing. We've 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 in something your system's better? It's so much more complex than I believe many other people who look at this industry for a and what second thing is. And this is another really people don't understand this 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 in a plane, or it's not drug, but it is very regulated. And it's complex, and you've got to meet it. And if you want to be mercil record in travel, you've got adhere to a whole bunch of rules, et cetera. And by the way, around the world, much more than the U.S., around the world, those regulations,

are increasing, or not saying so 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 going to 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. So I guess if you reflect on life or you reflect on things looking forward, because, I mean, you've had an incredible run, right? And the run is by no means over. You know, you still have so much stuff working on and doing.

In fact, I think we're just going to start. I tell me, this is an exciting time ever, ever, because of the ability to build these new things. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think this is a transformative moment. Totally. In terms of this technology and the world, a 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. you know, you joined Priceland to your point when it's 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 are working on, fingers crossed. If we do what we're supposed to do. How do you think about just like what you hope to accomplish more broadly in life or what is the right measure of a person or, you know, of an outcome or of the next few years? I'm just sort of curious because, you know,

we chatted very briefly earlier and I felt like you're somebody who's thought deeply about more than just, you know, how will I drive bookings forwards, although obviously you think about that quite a bit. I'm just sort of curious, like, you know, what is the right measure in general that you're measuring yourself against or how are you thinking about the next couple years? Yeah, well, look, I am, I'm very blessed. I've been very lucky in my life that I'm in a business that I could pretty much do what I'd like to do. And sometimes I'll ask me, why do you continue to do what you're doing?

And I said, because I think, I think be part of this, he's doing something good. And yeah, we're not carrying cancer. I know that. But I think that travel is a very important thing for a lot of people. It really adds to their lives. We can do it better at the population is to make it easier for everybody to experience the world. And I believe that does improve everybody improves the world by getting people to travel, more experience other cultures, other people, et cetera.

and we can do it right and make it easier. That's great. I want to be part. I want to help do that. I do believe that's adding something. And, you know, that's part of the thing. Everybody needs to understand. And 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 or all that. That's the only job they have to afford to be able to support their family. I got that. I believe I know that. But for people, you know, who have a little bit of, 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 and what will be believed their life should be and that whatever it is as long. You're going that path. That's great. My biggest fear too much is people who've taken past that in the end, they're middle-aged or later

and they're a little bit wistful about it. I wonder if I'd have done that. And I'll be probably honest in, And I hope to, not too many in my law school class, I've seen this, I hope. But I fear that too many of them, they chose going to law school because that was just kind of like a path. And then they became lawyers just because, you know, that's normally what you do when you come out of law school. I didn't, but many people did. And then it paid really well.

And it was easy and their comfort zone. And then they were, you know, later in life, it was kind of like, gee, what did I do? And that's what I think everybody should bring a heart about making sure you choose wisely. You know, one thing we've talked about quite a bit is that AI impact on jobs and, you know, there's this claim jobs apocalypse and all these other things coming. I would love to hear your views on that and how you think about that. So it is really interesting. I mean, we take it in terms of the general sense of technology, job replacement.

That's something that happened forever. We will look at the way the agrarian societies went more towards urbanization, the technology, vast, 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 we acquired booking.com.

they were doing hotel reservations in over 40 languages which meant all the content all the scripts everything was in 40 languages and the service 40 languages

all that is wonderful and there were a lot of people involved that because all the translation now in the old is like 2005 all the translation are being there's no machine translation

at all the time and all those customer service human beings we had to have people and all these 40 different languages That was a big deal. Now, now we have machine translations. All those jobs are gone.

There's nobody to do anything. All those jobs disappear. So what happened to those people? Where did they go? What the jobs are they now taking? What are they doing? So that's an example where we see that happen in real time. Now, we have the issue now that.

Now the fear of, well, will I get a job coming out of university? Because all the jobs seem to be gone because what was necessarily looking at an analyst at a financial department or a business of bank or a big cooperation of those jobs not being done through basically AI. So it's jobs aren't as what's going to how to affect. Now we know

also the other side that new jobs are going to be created. We all know that also by history looking at the problem the speed of job disappearance and new job creation. Those rates are not happening probably the same rate. And the second thing is, what about the

people who are not able to make that change. So I think, well, I was thinking about the typical person I think about, he's a 50-something-year-old truck driver. And when the person who was making a very nice living and felt very good about it all because he or she is driving an 18-wheeler across the U.S. and very responsible helping contribute. It's a good job, man. And now, so that's completely automated.

If you're out of the job, how are we going to retrain that pro? was that person. That person could feel going bad. And we've seen in society how these type of large dislocations have caused problems in the past when you look at that. And I'm concerned that there's not enough thought being done about how are we going to deal with these changes if they happen too quickly or not. Society of as whole absolutely. It's always benefited and be able to do more things. but we have to work how are we going to deal with the flipside the cost that come with it. Do you have a specific viewpoint or proposal in terms of what we should be doing that?

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'd say every day I'm talking with my head of C. My Cs are overhead of how can we do the best training? How can we get people so we are ready for the future? How do we get them so they are becoming any illiterate? It's probably worth that lead. I don't know if I 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 our point. I think everybody should be thinking that way too. It's good for our company. It's a positive of our life for somebody to be able to use new tools in a better way. They're more productive.

That's great. It's good. But it also helps them for that career. Now, sometimes I could see somebody in short term saying, I don't want to 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 get more conversation about how to do it because I do. I am concerned if we end up in a situation. or people who start rejecting technology because of fear. That would end up being bad for us, the society, and by the way, other parts of all we're not going to have that problem. And there will be disadvantaged, I assure you, when I, in China, they're 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 got to talk honesty in openly, so we have a right conversation and do not end up on the bad side of people coming out and rejecting what actually are going to be good for society. That makes sense, yeah. It's interesting, too, because I know that 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. If you ask people, do you love using chat GPT 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 or itself back 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 then of course people are like, I don't like it. And so I think the questions are being asked a certain way on purpose. And I think to your point,

we need to be level added and say, okay, what's a 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 doom review or taking a pure sort of negative view on what's coming. So, you know, appreciate your perspective on that. So right, and part of the problem is in a democracy, which we have with them in favor of, you'll have people who are saying certain things because they're not just seeing what they believe, but they believe we'll give them a book. And that's also problematic in favor of democracy, but I'll be in favor of people, be a little more honest about what they're saying.

Yeah, yeah, what's their all purpose, yeah, 100%. Thank you so much for joining today. I really appreciate, you know, you sharing your various views across all these topics. It's been really great chatting with you. Well, thank you. Congratulations of all things that you have accomplished. It's pretty impressive. Find us on Twitter at NoPriarsPod. Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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