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Meanwhile, third quarter results from Booking Holdings as investors saying Booking Dot Yeah. Shares of the online travel booking service jumping today after the company beat estimates on growth. Bookings Booking also a boosted its financial outlook for the year as travel demand remains strong across markets. Joining US now for more is Glenn Fogel, who is CEO of Bookings Holdings. Glenn, thank you so much for joining. You spoke a lot
about international travel demand. I'm curious as to US travel demand. Is it moderating slightly?
Well, thanks for having me, and we're very pleased with our positioning in the US. It's one of those things where we can't control demand, we can't control supply. What we control is trying to make sure we get more share, and we believe in the previous quarter, we believe that we increased our share of the business, and that's the thing we really are trying to focus on. I can't
make people travel more or less. We have seen growth. Obviously, some of our supplier friends have reported different thoughts on how things went and how things are going to go in the near term. But from my point, of view. I don't worry about the near term so much. We're trying to build through the long term.
Sure, what are you seeing though in the details data? Our consumer is trading down on properties? Are they shortening stays?
No, we haven't seen that at all, and we haven't really seen that at all globally. In fact, we're very pleased with our growth rate in the US and other parts of the world. And it's been something that we have seen coming out of pandemic, a moderation after the initial incredible burst of people want to travel. Now we're in a more normalized situation. But we're still very pleased. Like we came in with global numbers eight percent of
our room nights up a year of a year. That's a really good number and it's something that we are looking forward to continue. We gave a projection of six to eight percent was the guidance for the fourth quarter.
I'm pleased with that.
Yeah.
So in terms of outlook, how far in advance are people planning their trips away, because, as you say, things are starting to normalize, but it's been so long that I have a hard time remembering how we used to travel pre pandemic.
Yeah, It's one of those things you always asking about. This thing. It's called the booking window, and essentially it is how far.
In advance so you go on book and right now we've been talking a little about expanding right now.
And there was a time right after the pandemic king when we're done with.
It and inflation was very high, and we saw a real increase in that booking window, and I was wondering, hard to prove where people trying to lock up the price today because they're a concern that was going to be much higher further down the road. That of course not nearly the problem at all nowadays, but again not something I worry too much about. Sometimes can be longer, sometimes it can be shorter. At the end of the day, it's all going to even out.
Speaking of locking in prices, I wonder to what extent your competition is airline loyalty programs or credit card points, because a lot of people will try to use those points up before they get devalued, rather than going to sites like priceline dot com or booking dot com.
Yeah.
No, it's an interesting point on that is where people in place you can be in dollars or it could be in points, I suppose, again, not a thing I worry too much about. And for us, you know, we don't participate those. We have our own loyalty program we call Genius, which we think is really superior in the sense that people are getting those discounts right away and it's.
Something that we believe is a different way to do it.
We don't give out points, but we definitely see it our level two and three at booking dot Com. You just level of two and three. They produce a tremendous amount of our business. In fact, over fifty percent of the room nights come from those people.
You have an AI trip planner right now, and I'm curious as to how that's impacting how people are booking. Are they booking different kinds of trips than they might normally, or are they, you know, making decisions faster than they normally would.
Well, a couple of things on that first. I'm really happy We've had it out for quite a while now. I'm continuing to iterate and improve it and the idea again is to try and make it easier for people to get what they want. Now in terms of the data, are people doing it faster or not it's really small numbers compared to the overall size of our business.
We talked last night a bit about it.
I mean, we have what someone they say, a lot of people are looking at it if you look at an absolute number, but there's a share of our total number of customers.
It's relatively low, and it's something that's still early.
I believe that this, though, is going to be something that's really going to be transformational over time and in the future, people will be using different types of generate AI trip planners to put together their entire trip.
We're glad we think we're going to lead in this area.
Jan I have to ask you about the election. Are you planning out different scenarios in terms of corporate tax rates and so on, and what you should be preparing for depending on who wins.
Well, you know, it's interesting you say the elections, so immediately, you know, I'll assume you mean the US elections.
We're a very global company.
They are elections happening all over the world, different times and stuff. We don't particularly choose how we're going to try and change our business based on one particular political event or not. We're always looking at all the elements that could influence our business.
Always to have a good planning.
I mean, now, preparation is a great play in terms of anything that can happen, but in terms of actually coming out and saying what we're going to do differently or et cetera, we'll wait until we actually see a closer in of what law changes may or may not happen.
You know, Vonnie started by asking about the strength in Europe and Asia and kind of asking you to contrast that with what you're seeing in North America. I'd like you to talk a little bit more about what you are seeing in Europe in Asia, given that China has been trying to stimulate its economy, but so far consumers still seem unconvinced that now is the time to spend, and of course that resonates throughout the rest of the region as well. In addition, you know, we're seeing Europe
slow down. They're not in recession, they're not heading into recession necessarily, but inflation has definitely taken a bite out of the consumer.
You know, it's interesting because we talked last night about the different reason how we did in the third quarter, and we were very pleased with Asia. It was our leader with a low double digit growth rate, and Europe was a high single digit growth rate.
So Europe still doing okay, even though we do see some of the GDP numbers a little lower than you would want them to be.
That being said, we believe again different parts of the world are going to perform at different times. It's great to be so global that one area that does slower not going to affect so much in other areas are able to pick up the slack. In terms of China, yeah, it certainly have been some issues there, and in terms of international outbound business, which is the area where we're more where we do more business there, it's still not up to where it was in terms of for the industry.
I'm not talking about specifically, I'm saying for the industry in terms of outbound Chinese business, not quite where it was pre pandemic yet, but it is still coming back, and obviously the government there is working to try and figure out how they're going to stimulate the demand there for their total economy. We'll see what happens again, one small part of our overall business.
All right, good stuff, Glenn, really appreciate your joining us today. Glenn follow a CEO of Booking Holdings,