Travel Alerts

10.09.2026

Booking seeks to recreate a travel agent’s expertise through technology

Glenn Fogel, PDG de Booking Holdings, lors d'une interview

In an interview with L’Écho touristique, Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings, outlines the group’s strategy to transform Booking.com into a “connected agency” by leveraging AI, data and personalization.

Toward “connected travel” driven by data and AI

Booking Holdings, which generated $186.1 billion in gross bookings in 2025 (+12%) and a profit of $5.4 billion ($, -8%), aims to offer an integrated booking experience.

Glenn Fogel says he wants to “recreate, and improve on, the expertise of a travel agent through technology”: increased personalization, anticipation of disruptions and dynamic recommendations before, during and after the trip.

Technology, partnerships and advertising

The group has integrated the Booking.com app with ChatGPT and is collaborating with major AI players (Google Gemini, Amazon/Alexa). Booking is also experimenting with advertising formats within generative AI environments.

Figures and outlook

  • Geographic split: Europe 50% of nights, Asia 25%.
  • Marketing spend in 2025: $8 billion.
  • Outlook for 2026: nights are expected to grow 5–7% if the macroeconomic environment remains stable.

“With technology and databases, you have access to far more data to make much better recommendations.” — Glenn Fogel

On the impact of AI on jobs, Booking is betting on internal retraining and is also supporting hoteliers through OpenAI’s SME AI Accelerator, targeting 10,000 European SMBs in the first half of 2026.

Our view

Behind Booking’s talk of personalization and artificial intelligence, a much larger battle is being waged, in our view: who will control the traveler’s entry point tomorrow?

Today, much of the journey still starts with a classic search: “hotel in Rome with a pool,” typed into Google or directly on Booking.com. Tomorrow, the reflex might be entirely different: asking an AI assistant to “organize four days in Rome in October for €1,500, in a quiet hotel, with good restaurants and an excursion outside the city.”

Is the difference fundamental? In the first case, the traveler browses dozens of results, compares and chooses themselves. In the second, the assistant can perform much of that selection on their behalf.

Whoever controls the conversation can therefore control an increasing share of the purchasing journey.

This explains Booking’s strategic interest in ChatGPT and other AI assistants. Booking has assets that large AI models do not naturally possess: a massive accommodation inventory, up-to-date availability and pricing, millions of reviews, booking and payment systems, and a direct commercial relationship with property owners. OpenAI also notes that the models used by Booking are connected to the platform’s proprietary data about properties, prices and availability.

Booking was also among the first partners announced when integrated apps launched in ChatGPT, a sign that the group intends to be present directly in new conversational interfaces rather than watching this transformation from the outside.

But this evolution is also a threat to Booking. If tomorrow an assistant analyzes hundreds of properties and recommends only three, the Booking results page loses part of its value. Even more, the brand itself could become less visible: the traveler would trust their assistant rather than the platform that supplies the inventory and executes the booking.

This is a new form of disintermediation. Booking built its success by becoming the indispensable intermediary between travelers and hotels (and likely much more tomorrow: transport, activities, meals…). It now needs to avoid becoming, in turn, a mere invisible supplier behind ChatGPT, Gemini or other intelligent agents.

This shift is already changing the industry’s marketing strategies. Skift reports, for example, that Expedia is developing a so‑called B2A, “Business to Agent” approach, treating AI agents as a new audience to convince alongside consumers. An agent will not necessarily choose a hotel because its brand is well known: it will methodically compare features, price, location, reviews and fit with the user’s request.

This could gradually change how hotels and destinations work on their visibility. After SEO aimed at Google and strategies targeting booking platforms, it will probably also be necessary to consider how a tourism offer is understood, evaluated and selected by AI agents.

Booking has clearly understood this. Its ambition to become a “connected agency” is therefore not just about offering better recommendations. The strategic stake is far greater: staying at the center of the relationship with the traveler while the interface used to plan and buy a trip may be changing.

Sources