Glenn Fogle, CEO of Booking.com parent Booking Holdings, said AI is transforming the way its customers select holidays.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Glenn said customers were able to interact with the site as if they were speaking to a ‘human being travel agent’.
He said AI is ‘the most transformative type of technology the world has ever seen. It is amazing.”
Previously, Booking customers used to select accommodation by choosing the level of stars required and facilities such as pools and gyms, he said, but now customers can ‘type in a natural language just like talking to a human being travel agent’.
“It is so much easier, that natural search,” said Glenn. He said Booking has further improved the process with AI Trip Planner, adding: “It is like a conversation with a human travel agent, it’s not a human travel agent, it is our AI doing it, but it is just like you are dealing with a human travel agent to come up with what is going to be the best holiday for you.
“It is such a great thing, seeing this technology making this so much easier.”
However, he accepted that it is ‘absolutely true’ that AI will replace humans in certain roles. “It is going to cause disruptions,” he said. “Everybody is replaceable.”
When asked about the role Booking.com could play in limiting overtourism, Gleen said: “We absolutely want to work with governments to come up with solutions but it is not for one company to make decisions about how they allow people to travel or not travel; that is why we have democracy in government, to come up with methods to do this.
“It is for not for us to try to steer somebody some way, that is not my job. If somebody wants to come to London because that is their dream…who am I to say no, no, no, you don’t get to go to London, you only get to go to Birmingham. The idea of shaping, so to speak, that is to be done through government process.”
Glenn said he liked the idea of limiting tourism to holiday hotspots via a combination of higher costs and ‘lottery’, whereby there are only a fixed number of tickets available per day. “I like the idea of both higher cost and lottery…. even if you might not be wealthy, you should still get a chance to visit some of the beautiful and great places in the world,” he said.
While this wouldn’t work in large, open cities, such as London, it could work for major ticketed attractions, such as the Pantheon in Athens, and in places like Dubrovnik, where the old town is encircled by a wall.
