Photo Credit: Pictured: Glenn Fogel, president and CEO of Booking Holdings, at Skift Global Forum on September 17, 2024. Skift
Both Booking and Expedia have the luxury to address consumer-facing AI from multiple angles, including chatbots, specialized agents, and startups. Their approaches overlap, but also have distinct differences.
LinkedIn X Facebook Email Gift What role will the internal startups Lola.com and the West Coast venture play alongside Booking's core brands? How do Penny's early conversion and CSAT metrics compare to Expedia's multi-agent tools so far? Why did Expedia decide the end-to-end chatbot model with Romie wasn't practical? Select a question above or ask something else
Booking Holdings is coming at AI with five main initiatives, including two internal startups and a soon-to-be launched Agoda trip-planning tool, according to executive comments at investor conferences last week.
Priceline's Penny, which was recently revamped into an underlying agentic system, is the standout so far, with officials touting it during earnings calls and financial presentations.
"We're definitely getting good CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) numbers," said Booking CEO Glenn Fogel, who was speaking at the Citi 2026 Global TMT Conference. "We're in good engagement and higher conversion," he said, referring to Penny and adding that it's a "very small sample."
Three Booking brands, Priceline, Agoda and Booking.com, are working on trip-planning tools.
"Agoda will launch something similar in the near future," said Chief Financial Officer Ewout Steenbergen at a Goldman Sachs conference. Agoda has already rolled out sever
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Tags: agoda , booking holdings , booking.com , online travel newsletter , priceline , steve hafner , travel tech
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