Booking Holdings Inc. (BKNG) September 8, 2026 Conference Transcript

And I'm thrilled to have with us today, Glenn Fogel, who, as a keynote speaker for this year's, one of the keynote speakers for this year's Global TMT Conference. I think everybody here knows what Booking Holding is, right? It's one of the largest online travel agencies out there. 1.3-plus billion room nights this year, maybe, 36% or a third around a term of accommodations or so. And you combine the room nights with air and rental cars, you're talking close to 200 plus or over 200 plus billion dollars of gross bookings this year suffice to say not a small business and we operate in three brands obviously booking Priceline Agoda and and many more so with that Glenn welcome thank you for having me thanks for joining us look it's the end of summer maybe I will just start with some ice breakers to get the cobwebs off if there's such a thing but let's see let's do some ice breakers first thing that comes to mind. See if you can just fill in the blank.

Okay.

All right. Connected trip is blank.

Great.

Great. Great. Genius creates.

Value.

AI can.

Solve everything.

We'll get into that in a little bit, I'm sure. Conversion rates have.

That is something that we have to be very careful answering right now.

Could.

Could be great.

There we go. And I've got two more, three more maybe. SEO?

SEO is something that is on a trend.

B2B?

Great future.

And how did you book your summer travel? Did you go on summer vacation and how did you book it?

I did. And we did use booking. and we also used a third-party outfitter called Backroads for hiking and biking in Switzerland. And it was a fantastic trip, and I saw so many opportunities for us at booking in the connected trip where it could have done certain things that I wanted to do in the future that will make travel so much better.

Always good to have an eye-opening experience, and now you have even more to work towards.

Absolutely.

That's helpful. So that's helpful around Connected Trip and genius and what AI can do, make everything better. Maybe let's back up for a little bit, and we have about 30 minutes or so. We'll go to questions with around five minutes left, so get them ready. But I listened to your podcast the other day on grit. I thought it was fantastic because it made me relive a bunch of my memories growing up in the Internet world and realize I'm old. Not as old as me, but okay. But what I wanted to do is ask you a little bit about how would you compare the current environment, internet world, just to what we have lived through, what you have lived through around the proliferation of internet in 2000s, the transition to mobile and smartphones, I was even, as I was putting my questions together, the transition to broadband, but we're going way back.

But with AI, how do you compare the experience on the internet today to what could be today, or what's coming to what you've seen in the past so we're all familiar that technology continues to accelerate its growth things are getting better all the time and i go all the way back to the early 80s my first job out of university i was a coder a developer i was working with mainframe technology way back then now we're talking more than 40 years later I never envisioned what we have today would ever come that's all sci-fi and it is so fantastic now but it will be so much better in the future our job is to stay ahead and is to execute that potential and how do we execute what what is the potential in your mind and how do we execute it all right so in the way back and I've talked with people in the audience I've seen a bunch of you and talking you you've heard me talk about this in the past travel in the past you had a human being travel agent kind of knew you a little bit they would choose certain things that they thought you would like and you had conversation with the person face to face and then you went on your travel you gave that person one payment and off you went and if anything went wrong you called her and she fixed it. It was all fine. But of course, the person who was the traveling had limited knowledge. She had limited access. She didn't have a giant database. She certainly didn't have what we currently have in terms of what is possible. And she had only certain choices she could make. It was very complicated. Now, because of technology, we have everything possible. Now we can create the truly personalized, the connected trip that really will make it easier, better, flexible, and personalize it such that I will really get the value that is best for me and my family. We're not there yet, but we are so much better than we were with that offline travel agent, and we're so much better off we were 20 years ago. It's really when I think about when I went traveling around Asia in the 80s, it was like, you know, I was off on another planet. Forget about the other side of the earth, another planet. Now, what we can do instantly, it's fantastic. But, but, there's still problems. Everybody who travel knows. You got problems, you travel, it happens. You got delays, you got cancellations, the hotels know what you thought it was going to be, the rooms know what you wanted, the activity you wanted got canceled, all this stuff. We need to make it so it's easier to come up with the initial planning Then easier to actually do all the actual bookings, reservation, get all that set up. And then when stuff falls apart, which it will, weather, mechanical, stuff happens. And it's dominoes one after the other. One goes down, they all go down. You want to have a system that will fix it immediately, what I really want. And this is what we know about AI. What is AI? It is a prediction machine. That's all AI is, is predicting. I want it predicting the problems before the customer even knows it may probably happen and be ready and able to fix it before it happens. That will be the success. That is why we'll have customers coming back to booking because it is so much better.

The personalization is key.

It's very important.

Having the data behind it is critical. You can't replace that. And so you brought up how AI can solve everything. And so just talk to us a little bit about how you view AI helping the business solve everything, so to speak.

So examples are a good way to demonstrate. And I talked about some of them today. And one of my favorites is because I spent a lot of time in Amsterdam with our Booking.com office. And every tourist who goes to Amsterdam always wants to take the canal trip on the boat, going through the canals. Everybody does that. Everybody wants to go to the Reich Museum because they've got some of the greatest paintings, old world masters type stuff. Okay, so it's Wednesday you're planning to do the boat tour. You got your ticket from that from booking.com. Tuesday you got your museum ticket scheduled to enter at 2 p.m., let's say. On Monday you're there. What I want happening is AI, the whole thing. Obviously it's not hard to know what the weather's going to be. We see it is going to be raining on the boat day. it's sunny on the museum day we are proactively reaching out your travel agent is up in the phone in your pocket and we are reaching out on Monday suggesting that we change it around we'll do the boat tour on the sunny day you go to the museum on the rainy day would you like to do that just say yes we'll handle it all we'll do the rebookings we'll make sure we get you the tie here it all comes and there's so many examples of that and as an agent you're working for the customer and that's what we really want to have happen I have a thousand examples to give where I want it and I believe when

we have that that will be somebody says you know I like using booking because they truly are looking out for me 24 7 365 days a year and it really makes a difference so let's talk about because this is a discovery side so to your point you know to go on the canal maybe maybe you'll go to the museums what have you how do you know to do that so in other words talk to us when you're in the trip planning stage and how the experience can change understood when you're there the experience changing is you know having that in your pocket incredibly helpful but when planning is half the fun truly and so how do you think about discovery how do you think about how that evolves the same way it

was 40 years ago with the offline traveling and that is through a conversational interface type thing but the personalization you already have the history we have customers who have been with us for 20 something years i want us using what we know about the person so another example which i like because i just used i'm in switzerland i'm in zurich and i made this comment a couple times today to some of our investors where we were in zurich and my family we like to swim in lakes now Now, booking should know this because we book a lot of hotels that are on lakes. So, in Farah, they probably like to swim. We're in Zurich. It was a hot day. It would have been wonderful to have gotten a notification telling us, hey, there's a public beach-type area on the lake in Zurich for five Swiss francs. It's only about a mile down the road. We can get, you know, interaction and all that. That would have been wonderful. We didn't get that. That's something that we need to have coming. But that conversational, would you like to go swimming in the lake? That could have been much earlier when we were first doing the planning. You're going to Zurich. What would you like to do? Well, there's a beautiful lake. It's summertime. You may want to go swimming. Those kind of interactive, using the personalization of what we already know about the person and help drawing it out to make it what could be really great.

And how far away are we from drawing it out?

We're not there yet.

We're getting there. it'll take some time um we often get the question you know the the tools that are available on booking between ai trip planner penny agoda's bot um you know different experiences across the board so to speak any anything to call out on lessons learned from those experiences thus far that i think we talked about maybe hotel cancel rates have improved yeah so it is nice to see small samples, people who use these products, particularly, I'll give you a price line penny, because we recently did a revamp to it, and I'm using it now, and I'm like, wow, that's cool, interesting,

helpful, and we're definitely getting good CSAT numbers, we're getting good engagement, we're getting higher conversion, all the good numbers, all good things. Small sample, though. Very small sample. I believe one of the great things is being of the size that we are enables us to do a lot of different experiments at once. Now, a lot of people know about it from way back. You do a lot of A-B testing on the front end of booking. That's right, and that's in the way back, okay? But now, for example, we are doing experiments because I got three. I got Agoda, I got Price, and I got Booking, all of them coming from a different end with different AI ways to come with discovery, exploration, and booking. But even more, I got two separate AI native things being started, one by Steve Hafner, who formerly founded Kayak. He's got one, a guy, a person out of the West Coast, also an entrepreneur, who had previously started a company, telling them both, look, I want you just to pretend you're not part of the company and start something fresh. Greenfield, you're out of the thing. Here's the money. Go pretend you're a startup and see where you come up. AI native. So that's five. And then we have all the other things. So being the size that we are enables us to do a lot more experimentation, and that will then bring us back knowledge, information that we can then share, what's working really well, what apps is a disaster, don't touch that one, and that will help us get ahead faster.

Yeah, a lot of what we're talking about is really a connected trip.

Absolutely.

Right, knowing what to do or how to change tack if you need to, or go to a beach.

But that's the nature of travel, that is travel.

So connected trip is, I think, a strategic priority for the company. We've been talking about it for several years now. We're at low double-digit penetration of total transactions today. The question that we often get are, talk to us about the lifetime benefits to the user as you go through and you book with Booking or Priceline or Agoda of the connected trip.

And we have to add in another thing, which is genius. Because it's a place, too. And we're revamping. Genius is a fantastic loyalty program, but I want it to be even better. And it all ties together. The connected trip, genius, personalization, the flywheel effect. The more you use it, the better it is. Look, we're all familiar with different types of loyalty programs, different things that when you use it more, the supplier knows more about you, and they provide better service to you, and you get more value. That's how it should be with our travel offerings to our travelers and to our partners. Because one part of this is a two-sided marketplace. I've got to provide great value to the partner, to the hoteliers, to the airlines, to the car rental, to the attractions, to the insurance. I want to provide it for both sides of this marketplace. They're both getting more value by being part of this system. And overall, there's no reason, given the science, given the data, given the ability to do the right calculations to come up with what will really be advantageous to both sides. And I think we're seeing it. Look, the numbers are showing good. We talked about the last quarter. I'm pleased with the progress we're making. Somewhat, I'd like us to go even faster and better.

Sorry, faster and? So I think we've talked about connected trip and genius as a superpower was a comment. And I'm always floored when we hear level two and level three genius is upwards of, what, 30% of the customer base, maybe 50%, if I have this right, of high 50% of share of room nights. That 30% of your active customer base.

Greater than 30, but go on.

Greater than 30. You know, let's talk about how that superpower can become an incredible power, if that's possible.

So we're always looking at how do you provide more benefits to your most loyal customers, the people who really are the ones who are providing a great deal of the value to the company. And then, though, the question is, well, who's going to pay for that and what is? Well, the issue really comes down to how do we incorporate it, as we've done so far with Genius, how do you bring in the partner even further? Because one of the great things about the travel industry is just the nature of the way the businesses work in terms of their financial profile. A hotel that has an empty room when they're at 65% occupancy approximately, let's say picking a number, depends on the hotel of course but let's just pick that one. That empty room goes empty that night, zero revenue. Fill it up and almost all of it goes to the bottom line. The only part pretty much that doesn't go to the bottom line is the part it costs the hotel to get that head in the bed. So, if we can get the hotel to participate say we're going to give you that incremental person they would be happy to help contribute which is why we have things like genius where they are willing to give us lower prices you're genius three you're getting some darn good price cuts there to get you in there and a lot of those funded did i hear you correctly is funded by the hotel right now that doesn't mean that we aren't also willing to contribute to for the right propositions the right time for the right customer will do that too and I am thinking about how can we do it even more sophisticated different ways and we do it now just not just hotels your car rental activities we should be doing it across everything and if you do more than one give me more benefit and then as we learn more and more about you we're able to give you an even more a closer look at what you want and be able you to feel even better about using because you're not seeing a a lot of crap you weren't interested in. I still get that, we gotta prove this. I mean, the fact is, when I was younger, I stayed in hostels and one stars. I'm 64 years old, I am never staying at a one star hotel.

Although, in the podcast, I think you're still very aware of where you're staying. Yeah, but I stayed at a four star.

That's fine, yeah, I do care about price.

We're not, I don't care that much.

I understand, we can't have bedbugs and, you know, I'm not sharing bathrooms anymore, not doing that.

Yeah, I think you deserve it.

I deserve that.

So the question then becomes 30% of your active customers are level 2 and 3. High 30, more than 30%. Can we get to 7? Why aren't we at 50%? Why are we not at a greater level than that?

Yeah, and that's something that we absolutely should. Now, part of the issue, though, is if it was 100%, our partners may not feel it's so special. and they may not feel, they may have a little problem saying, am I really getting incremental now or not? So there's a balancing act there in how you're going to do it or not. One of the things I really want to make sure we're doing is giving the increment, making sure it's incremental for our partners, that they really do believe they're getting true value out of the programs they work with. Again, it shouldn't be that hard to do, but sometimes you do feel that, do they understand that we really are giving them more value and it really is worth participating. Sometimes I'm concerned we're not explaining it well enough.

It's something to certainly watch as we go forward, for sure, connected trip and genius. Maybe shifting gears a little bit, talking regionally, US-specific. I think the comment, it's a long-term growth opportunity in the US, but we're adding more supply, I think, and we're seeing supply drive high single-digit growth in room nights and certainly outperforming what appears to be the broader market just talk just a little bit more where are we on adding the supply on building the brand of booking and how you manage or balance the brand of booking to the performance of booking if that makes sense more of a marketing question I guess yeah and they obviously intersect yeah and we talked about today with some of our investors and this is an old story for us is because booking started in Europe we have incredible brand awareness in Europe and

our alternative accommodations business in Europe is really great if you're in Paris and it's the summer and you're saying I want to go to the south of France you know I need a I need an apartment though I want an apartment in Nice okay where should I go and people on the street of Paris will say well you go to booking.com of course and that would be absolutely top of mind if I walked outside this building here and I said you know I'm thinking about going for the weekend to South Hampton yeah I like a home near the near the ocean or where should I go I can almost guarantee you not a single person go say booking.com that's a problem that's something that we need to work on well we don't have a lot of homes on the ocean in South Hampton that's the supply issue we've got to make sure to get that up which is a great opportunity it's something I see as something that it's this is great because we haven't done it yet we're still doing really well and then you have to get the awareness around that that people know hey I need a home in Southampton I'm gonna go to book not come there's not that awareness so we need to get the market chicken and egg though you got to have the supply before you start marketing and to get the marketing you gotta have the spot goes back and forth we're working on that I'm pleased with the progress we've made to date I'd like us to do more and I've been talking about this for some time and people have seen the numbers over the last few years our home business has been growing very well our number of

accommodations in that area has been growing very well but I wanted to do even better I particularly want to do better in the US and so how do we I think we've been talking about adding alternative accommodations in the US specifically for some time I think there was partnerships with maybe professional services firms yes to do that we've been talking about you know going to Hamptons or what have you what what needs to happen so that when you walk outside you have the supply so people can start talking about this yeah Yeah.

There's no magic bullet. It's just grinding it away, grinding it away, grinding it away, going out. Now, we did, you know, I don't know how much people know this. There were a couple professionally managed companies that had some problems recently, but Casa, Sander, there were some blowups there. It caused, you know, there were some issues there in terms of supply. We got to get that back on. Again, it really is just a ground, it's basically a ground war. You just go out go out you got to sign them up and you got to then provide them with volume and how do we make the experience superior to others so you have this maybe supply is the right answer but then you know you need the great experience so that you can be that competitive yeah you got to make sure that your product is matching up with other people's or even better and that may be something like do you offer the same type of insurance that you're offering a homeowner or are you offering of the same type of services that they want. Those are things that, again, the great thing is it's not a secret because you can just go onto the website of a competitor and see what are they offering, and then you pretty much know. So that's really good. We just have to grind it out. And Rome not built in a day. Neither will our ability to get to where I want to be in the America home business. But we are on the right path, and it is growing.

Okay, perfect. Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about Asia, another focus area, I think. You know, I think bookings, integrating bookings reach with Agoda seems to be resonating with the results there. I wanted to understand a little bit more about the Asia market and specifically how booking is attacking it across the board. But let's call it AI specifically.

So one of the important things we always like to remind ourselves is that we say Asia.

It's a launch market. Many different markets in there.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I'm very pleased, though, Agoda has done a great job of really becoming one of the absolute leaders pan-Asia. Many different markets, so they're doing very well in many of them. It's one of the things where we have the localization of Agoda. it's really helpful our headquarters there in Southeast Asia to be able to have people there who are actually knowledgeable there working with all the time and they localize those sites localize it so it really fits and they are different if you go to Korea it looks different if you go to Japan it looks different if you go to Vietnam it looks different if you go to India it's all different so that's great but then you can combine that and work with we have booking which is the global with the scale and breadth and we get the benefits from both working together it's really a one-two punch that i think has been very effective so far and i absolutely am so encouraged because we know look in the demographics of asia they are very

positive for travel over the very long term so i um let's see i've got so many more questions we'll open up for the audience here in a little bit as well um so so we can get our questions ready uh Let's see, maybe switching gears somewhat going to B2B. B2B is something that comes up in many of our conversations that we have on booking. And I think we just condensed leadership, combined leadership to have one solid leader here. Just talk just a little bit about the incrementality, if you will, to booking's business overall. So this is not a new, this is a newer thing, I guess, that we're talking about, not newer for you because the business is sizable. but talk just a little bit about how the organization is now structured to really go after this market.

Yeah, so the B2B business is interesting for us. It's been there all the time. We've been doing this for a real long time. So it's a bit of a surprise when we hear other people are surprised because we decided to bring together the three units. So we had separate B2B units at Agoda, Priceline, and Booking. And, you know, looking at it and thinking about it, their pluses and minuses of having different units doing a very similar business now. One of the things in the end that we said, you know, there's duplication going on here. Each one of the three units has some really good things, but they're not the same for each of them. So we'd end up with going out to a client, and we'd have two teams calling on the same potential client, and the client might say something like, you know, I really like that part from Agoda, but I like that part from booking. Can I have both? They say, well, that's not how it works. And they're like, oh. And we'll finally say, you know, this is not the best thing. Let's combine them into one, which goes live January 1. Let's have one leader of all of them. Let's avoid, which you'd be surprised. You know, sometimes there's competition among internal groups when they call on the same client. You may be shocked to hear that. Should have never happened to Sydney, right?

No, never.

Never, no. So by doing that, it'll be more efficient. It'll be more effective. I believe we'll be able to get even more business. and it is a sizable business and such. You know, it's one of those things that maybe we should have talked about it more in the past, but okay, we'll talk about it going forward in next year.

I'll try to get something like, so you said sizable business. Any way to frame it or think about that from our perspective?

Well, it's bigger than not sizable.

Bigger than not sizable. That's a fair comment. Fair. You can see I'm not actually going to tell you. Oh, I didn't expect it to, but now we can dissect with that word. We'll come back to you. Let's talk about, let's stick with B2B, but the differentiated approach here that booking offers on January 1 compared to others out there, or not even compared to others, such that a partner will choose to work with bookings? Is that partner an and or an or?

Oh, many times it's an and, because many, many very large partners, clients, they'll take supply from anybody. we'll take them from anybody and then they'll choose what they want to show or not depending on price etc there are a lot like that which makes sense to me actually why wouldn't you do that if you can right though some of them are unique some say I only want to work with you for a particular reason but it so you get both it's and or but I'll say that yes officially we go live January but we've been working on this bringing them together over the year and stuff but then going forward it's going to take even more as we create that one technology platform so I will never have that

client who says I like that one from him and I like that one from her and why can't we do together that will be gone but it won't be gone January 1 right and now we can operationalize it right so more questions coming then yes be prepared yeah okay so let's see there's about six minutes left or so if there's any questions in the audience I think there's mics in the back or Of course, I can keep going here. Maybe as we think of ideas. There's one over here. If there's a mic.

Or if you just share it, we'll repeat it.

Yeah, exactly. The discussion is which partnerships protects Booking's role in discovery. Did I get that right? Proprietary data. What proprietary data protects Booking's role in discovery?

So I've been here 27 years. There's almost no proprietary data of any kind. Now that may seem somewhat negative. why would the CEO of this company say something that's not, you know, oh, look at all this exclusive stuff we have. Because it's true, okay? You can get data from almost any source. Hotels, somebody says, like, oh, can you get hotel information? Sure you can. But is it live? Is it accurate? Is it right away? And it's even more so, is it what the customer is going to want? So when I say customer, we're talking about the partner. So, for example, one of the great things that we do is working with our partners, which is a huge number. But sure, somebody can go find a channel manager and hook up and have it, but they're not working the way we work with them to help them build their business better. So, for example, we see they're having a problem with their sales for a month or something, and we come back to them with ideas. Maybe what would be right now is you should enter into our preferred program right now. Or maybe you're not participating in Genius right now and you lost out on this amount. So it's really using the data that's proprietary, what we learn, what we know. That's the real secret sauce is then being able to use that, working with the partners to be able to construct things that enables them to improve their business even more. That's why they like to work with us. They would never work with us if they didn't have to. If they could get all their business themselves, they would very happily do that. If they could, they work with us because it's a good ROI for them to work with us. And that is maybe, while not proprietary, it is a symbiotic relationship that improves both of our businesses. And being able to do it globally around the world, there's nobody who's able to do it the way we do that.

That's one of the reasons we've been able to build the business that we've had. and sometimes there's a naive belief that oh well I just set up an MPC server and I'll get the data it ain't going to work that way at all and so we often get the question a lot of we'll come to your question in a second a lot of I think one of your largest one of the largest vacation rental competitors out there is going into hotels I've heard that Airbnb is doing this but your answer is is it live do we have the inventory the supply, the integration. Talk to us about how you think about that.

Well, I think even more important is, and this will be interesting how it plays out over time. So one of the interesting questions may be, if somebody who is thinking about getting a home goes to a site, sees a hotel instead, says, oh, okay, I'll get that hotel, fine. Now, the hotel doesn't get that sale instead. So over time, when you start getting to scale, right now, there's no scale at all. I mean, like, less than no scale. It's like, you know, find a microscope, maybe you'll see it. But it may grow. Good. If it does, though, does that just mean then that the homes aren't getting as much business as they used to from that person, that partnership? And then does that give us even more opportunity in the home area? Because now the homes who maybe in the past might have said something like, yeah, think about working with you, but I get a lot of, I got a lot of business right now. It's a pain. I'll come back to you next year. Maybe now it would be a little different. Like, yeah, my sales are down now. It seems a lot of people now are going to hotels instead. So that could actually be an advantage for us. Could be a benefit. We'll see.

Interesting. We had a question over here.

How do you assess the risk of AI apps and social media was included to potentially doing your business so forever people have used many different ways to discover travel learn about travel explore travel have fun looking at travel pretty pictures things i may want to do things that my friends do things that people i don't even know do but it looks really cool okay that's been going forever that's not new there's nothing new about here at all just a different way to do that some Some people say, though, but then won't they then go directly to the supplier, et cetera? Well, if only it was so simple as we just talked a little bit, it's a little bit harder than that. And even more so, and that's where the connected trip really comes to the forefront, being able to provide what the customer really wants, which is a much easier way to construct and execute and feel the trust that it'll be taken care of, that my money is being put in a place where it's safe, that when things go wrong, somebody will fix it for me, that the person has obeyed all the rules and regulations, that the property actually exists. All those things that people do. It's that trust issue. Why do we get the numbers that we do? Because people believe booking with us makes a difference. There's no shortage. Nobody's ever had a shortage of ways to do their booking. Ever. Nobody. No matter what a government say about dominant positions, The truth is, every day you can go on, and you can go out and get a booking anywhere. People come to us, and approximately mid-60% of people are coming to us directly on the B2C. Why? And on repeat this, why do people do it? Because we are providing them a better service, a better way to do it. And I don't believe that the fact that somebody can go to social media, and there's some AI thing or whatever, I don't see that as really going to change much in the long run. I really don't. However, we will continue to have to do very well in improving the product, improving things for the customers, because there are a lot of other very big players who are very good, and we recognize competition never ends.

Potentially, as we get into an agentic world where agents can be booking agents on your behalf and everything else, but maybe the trust issue is the answer.

The trust issue comes up, and how does the customers, the traveler's agent think, huh, we should use booking because it's better.

That should be a tagline, booking because it's better. Any other questions? I got maybe one more over there, and then we're close to overtime.

When you look at the dispute resolution process, how much more improvement do you think you can get through usage of AI, etc., to make it a little less clunky? because it still feels like you still have to talk to a human at the end of the day to get something done.

Beat the question.

So the question, I think, is around customer service and specifically dispute resolution, and can AI help to... Right.

So, look, one of the wonderful uses of AI, as many, many companies have been able to prove out, we certainly are very proud of how we've been able to use AI to lower our costs while increasing our customer satisfaction numbers for the customer service area and the truth is there are many many many issues that are being solved by AI absolutely no human intervention which enables the human then to be able to spend more time on it a and the human can also use AI to be able to come up with what the right answer is how to deal with it much better much faster and be able to do their own job even more effectively because they have all these AI tools. It will get better and better, absolutely. I agree, there are a lot of things where you really do want to talk with a human being right now. However, over time, that will continue to decrease, decrease, decrease. And I know for a fact, some people, they absolutely do not want to talk to a human. In fact, they just want the darn thing solved. Whatever solves it fastest and fixes it immediately, They don't care if you use, you know, whatever, two tin cans and a string. Just fix it. And we're seeing it.

I mean, I think we've seen double-digit reductions in customer service costs while bookings continues to go up.

Yeah, and the CSATs are going up too.

And CSAT continues to go up as well.

Yeah, it's great.

Would you argue maybe AI adoption, the customer service is further along than on the discovery or the front end?

Say that again?

Would AI adoption or AI benefits further along on the customer service side than maybe on the booking side, discoverability?

So to make sure I'm saying using AI, will we see similar types, increased satisfaction, et cetera, using that? I think people right now are already seeing it right now, using it right now, absolutely.

Any other questions? We have one more over here, and then I think we're in overtime. But, Glenn, we can go on and on. It's up to... We're keeping you from drinks, isn't it? We are keeping everyone from the U.S. Open Watch Party. Hopefully you'll join us.

You've really scaled significantly the last, I don't know, three to five years as you make all these investments. Just how do you think about it?

Yeah, that question comes up an awful lot. People were always asking, well, could you please increase your margins? And at the same time, you say, shouldn't you lower your margins and invest more? So my thinking is not raise margins, lower margins. I say, what are the opportunities? We have free cash flow. How do we want to put it to work? What do we think will increase the value of the company over the long run? Where should we place it? How should we place it? Are there opportunities or not? And that's the way we're looking at it. And it certainly starts with organic growth. And then we'll be looking, hey, is there anything we could acquire in organic things that will make it better for the long run? And then at the end of the day, if we don't have the use of that, then it's up to the shareholder. You guys probably have better use of the money. If I can't figure out ways to do it better, then let's return it to the shareholders and let's let them invest it the way they want to invest it. But so it's not looking specifically to a target margin. It's where are the opportunities? How much should we spend on it?

What do we think of the ROI? what is the probability it will be successful or not it's great any other last questions or with that I think we'll wrap it up Glenn thank you very much for your time super insightful very helpful appreciate it thank you