Next up is Gillian Tans, who is ranked high on Fortune's most powerful women's list. She is the chairwoman of booking. com, one of the world's leading digital travel companies. It was founded in 1996 in Amsterdam. It's grown from a small start- up to a company with a revenue of 7. 5 billion Each year and offer services and 43 languages and according to my notes over 200 countries. Is I say according to my notes because I tought their only 197 countries. So she seems to be operating more countries and we have, well ask her about that. And here's your random fact in the morning. Seven guests per second check into a place to stay on Booking. com. The companies also at the forefront of innovative AI solutions to create a better customer experience, a more robust business model. And they believe a better world. Please join me in welcoming Gillian Tans. [ MUSIC ] [ MUSIC ] Gillian thank you so much for being here with us. You have a fascinating business. I think most people are familiar with the bookings business. But what they may not know is that you've also invested heavily in DD, what nearly half a billion dollars. [ UNKNOWN ] and Grab. Which makes me wonder, what are you building here? [ LAUGH ] What we are building. No, I think if you go back to booking. com and China for instance I think we already started working in China a decade ago. If you think about travel, and technology companies in travel, they cross borders a lot quicker just because of the nature of travel. And I think we started But in China, many Chinese travelers will use Booking. com to travel overseas. And we've learnt very quickly that our motto was being globally scalable, but locally relevant, but in China that even had a different meaning and localization, we had to take it to the next level. Which meant that we had to think about partnerships but also we had to think about creating our own business unit which we have in China today. And these partnerships started off sea trip for instance because that's not the biggest investment we have in sea trip. And then, Which and sea trip is in a very similar business right? Correct. Booking hotels. Yes. Yeah, so we've partnered with to trip and later on we partner with DD and also with mate one. But that suggests that you're going well beyond hotel bookings that you want to control the transportation, the entertainment, the food, the whole travel ecosystem. Well if you think about travel and the connected trip. I think many customers today who wanna take a big trip you need so many elements. And that's why you see a lot of more corporation in travel as well. Because you need each other to really build this connected trip for consumers and I think the work we're doing with [ UNKNOWN ], for instance, is a good example where we can actually deliver transportation and a variety of services in little southeast Asian countries. And also [ UNKNOWN ] can actually showcase properties to their consumers. So these corporations are really valuable. Because many people don't know, right? Many people don't know if they arrive in an airport in a certain destination, how is the best way to get from the airport to my accommodation? Sometimes it's better to take the train if you arrive in Tokyo for instance, and sometimes it's better to take A taxi etc, so and that's something that we are very involved in and trying to solve for consumers. So when you think about it that way that connected travel with all the different pieces tied in together, who is your competition? I mean are you competing with DD? Are you competing with grab are you? Who do you? Who do you in your mind when you wake up in the morning? Who is it you think you have to beat? Yeah, I think I meant as many companies out in travel, right? I think if you think on a global level, then probably Expedia is the biggest company out there on a such a global scale. But then in China you also have CTrip, who is very powerful. Of course, here in China you have to travel Loka in Indonesia You have made my trip in India, so you see these many companies all over the world that are very active in travel and if you think about it, travel is almost 10 % of global GDP, so it's a huge industry. People tend to forget about that. And what do you think is your secret weapon for winning in that battle? Our secret weapon if you think about it, we've built I think the most global business. If you think about our inventory, we have 29 million listings on booking, I think you think about the breadth of selection. We've managed to build that far less globally than anybody in the world. Also think about the customer experience and how much effort every day. We still any technology company out there, that's how fast we innovate for consumers and then there is the quality of service, the expectations of customers, so you see that specifically in HS world is very high So we need to make sure we keep delivering on that. And that's may have, I mean booking has always been extremely focused on consumer and it keeps measuring through data for actually doing the right thing. And that's we're taking further and further I want to come back to that in a minute. But you talked about the global reach of booking. com. I said in the introduction that you're in more than 200 countries and I didn't know there were that many countries is, maybe I should ask you, where aren't you? [ LAUGH ] Yeah, I think we're one of the most global businesses out there. We actually count countries and territories that, I see This number is more than the countries there are in the world. But we operate in every country in the world because there's Is there any place you can't operate? Well, we can't operate in Cuba for instance. Cuba is, yeah. Okay. So we're an American List of companies should look for instances where we're not today. Yeah, but that's it. Pretty much. Yeah, that's it. There's a few areas where we don't operate. How big is your business in China these days? Yeah, it's a very important market for booking. com. We don't give out specific numbers. But as you can imagine, it's a high growth market for us as well. If you think about that we started off in China so early on, and many Chinese customers use booking to travel outside of China but also now we're building up more and more of our business in China. And you see a lot of inter inter Asia connections that we are facilitating today. Can you talk about size as a share of your total business? Yeah, no, we don't give out his name. You even this is a small group of friend Yeah I know and so [ UNKNOWN ] a film star. [ LAUGH ] A. I you're investing, you said you were investing heavily in technology. To do what? Yeah. If you think about like I spoke about this experimentation culture and how data plays such a crucial role. And making sure we understand where to innovate for consumers. And then you take the connect, the trip into account. And to be able to do that well, you need to do more personalization. Because otherwise it's almost impossible to bring that altogether and make sure you can deliver the most perfect trip for a certain consumer. Then if you think about machine learning AI plays a crucial role in that and since booking always has been so extremely data driven, the step into machine learning we have been doing for many years. every customer touches machine learning today, somewhere through the funnel and even AI We predict that probably in the upcoming years 50 % of customers will touch AI somewhere as well. So, you see that these technologies are becoming very important for the future, and innovation we're also I can deliver much more to consumers ,. And if you think about it. Today, we can reccommend destinations to customers which you can't do it wouldn't have these datasets. Is it based on your knowledge of the individual customer? How much you if I come to the site, how much you know about me? Well, we know from customers if they have used booking before. Yeah. But and there's also data that we use from a large group of customers, right? Yeah. So that's booking is with data concern. Quite straightforward. We only use data from customers to make the experience better on booking. We don't do anything else with data. We don't buy data from somewhere else. So it's pretty straightforward in that sense. But how, since you mentioned tbis so carefully, how big a difference does personalization make in your ability to turn a visitsbooking. com into a booking? Extremely. You all ready see that today in destination recommendations in suggestions for accademiations to consumers you and I will see a different type of product all ready today. You will see it in the pictures that we can show to consumers as to what their interested in Review data might be different because of what you need to know to even customer service and how we expect customer service flows. And that's all based on data translations. I think we translate 2. 2 billion words already for machine translation. So there's so many examples in bouquet, we're over the Machine learning plays such a big role in what we're doing. Do you have any trouble getting the talent you need to build those algorithms? Yeah. We have the main part of our talent if you think about product and technology and data science all set in Amserdam we are Dutch originated company so we still have our headquarters in Amsterdam we have for the Chinese market. We have people sitting in Shanghai who do that specifically for China and also, we bought a company called Overture in Tel Aviv. And we've built around it, also machine learning and AI and office in Tel Aviv specifically focused on that. You have a technology background yourself, right? No, I don't. You do not. No. But you have had a big commitment to diversity. Yes. At the company, including making sure a large part of your technology workforce is female? Great. Yes? Can you tell us a little bit more about how you did that? Yes. Booking. com, actually from the start, has been a very diverse company, on many fronts. We have 140 nationalities working at Booking. com In total we have over 50 % women working at Booking. com. We've always felt that if you want to make sure that you are successful in innovation and if you want to make sure you build the best culture out there, diversity is crucial and diversity needs to be in your core values and that's what we have always been focusing on. On our technology part we have 20 % women, even though that is already, okay, it's still not where we wanted to be. And we have 30 % of women in our leadership community. So these are still not two numbers that we would like to get up and we focus a lot internally but we realized that we also need to work externally to get these numbers up. So we do several initiatives. We do mentorship programs at big tech conferences. For instance, I just came from the web summit in Lisbon where we do own site mentorships, and we have a big women in technology lounge and this year there were 46. 3 % women. So that also shows the summit. Yeah. And I was in a 70, 000 people there that shows that there is interest more and more for women to start working in technology company. So that makes me really happy. And second part we do is there's not enough role models out there. And that really is a problem because if women don't see other women succeeding Then it's a different step to make. So we have. How about in your Shanghai operation? Yeah. We have, she's sitting here, [ UNKNOWN ] who's leading our China business unit. A very powerful woman. [ UNKNOWN ] Yeah, we have many women here in operating in China. Booking. com has also made green travel a priority. I saw you had a recent partnership with Prince Harry, what is green travel? Yes, so, go back to the mission of booking. com, the mission of booking is really To help people to experience the world. And very early on when we defined this mission, we said we also need to make sure that we make the world a place where generations to come can keep exploring the world. And that's why we started working on our whole program within booking for sustainable tourism. Which started first with our own employees and their time. They were dedicated to improving the destinations all over the world. And then we said okay, what what else can we do to have a bigger impact? So we basically developed a program which is called the booking booster, which every year, we select ten startups all over the world that are active in sustainable tourism That we basically help growing so their footprint actually gets bigger and it brings our passion for technology together with our passion for sustainable tourism. Is there big demand for sustainable tourism? It's enormous and that's what I keep saying to everybody. We, we do a lot of. [ LAUGH ] How you say it. [ LAUGH ] That's the jetlag. [ LAUGH ] I know the feeling. We search, we do a lot of research with consumers and we've seen on our latest research that 71 % of consumers, they want travel companies to offer them sustainable choices. Yeah. But what you see happening is that today consumers don't always know what is a sustainable choice or even an accommodation park will not always know what do I need to do to become more sustainable. So there's still a lot of work to do and even doing that well. And that's also when we realized that with booking. com it would be very difficult to do this. And that's why together with the royal foundation we formed Travelist which has travel companies together to see how we can actually define these type of standards and make a bigger ->> the problem of course is the largest part of the carbon flip point of any trip is the airplane ride Air, yes correct. You can't do much about that. No. [ LAUGH ] No. Well today, I mean there's a lot happening in air as well but for booking that will be more complicated because we don't operate airplanes. So we don't. It's not Your business. Well we have the first pilot with air but But you're in so many other businesses maybe you should invest in an airline and see if you can tackle that one to what I want to open it up for questions or comments if anybody has them. I get a show of hands. Yes, go ahead. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Just very curious, because. I'm sorry, please introduce yourself to Gillian before you begin. Okay, sorry. I'm Henry from Mosiker. So, as family member actually my wife, lots of booking, heavy user. However, my personal favorite is LBMB. And in China, we actually as company leader, we work with Shenzhen, LBMB. Not booking yet but the question to you is when I hear about your future strategy to really combine the travel trip and accommodation into one package But that brings a lot of questions for me because the trip between the airport and accommodation relatively standardized, and for accommodation for different purpose is kind of related to the personal favorite, everyone has their own taste. So I just want to hear out from you. As booking when you are, let's say made your plan for this journey what's your future differentiation to differentiate yourself from the other competitor and to providing at the end is for business trip or it for family trip or calls for everything? Good set of questions. Very good question. And so let me start off with the alternative recommendations. Airbnb booking. com. Already today, like I said, we have 29 million listings and we have, if I'm not mistaken 6. 7 million listings in the alternative recommendations, apartments, home and anything else in between. So We are very active in this space accommodations today is still a huge focus of booking a congress still growing the amount of listings and you see in many countries in Asia. You see that there's still a segment which is coming online. Many people are putting their homes online I've just been to India where you'll Enormously growing with [ UNKNOWN ] for instance. So this has a focus of booking and I think it's a big differentiator of booking. If you think about having all of this diversity and accommodations, we have 30 categories on booking today which are customers Handbook. And we keep growing into the future. But besides that I think we realized that the differences is as well is building this connected trip. And building a connected trip is not through cross sale. Just saying okay you can book a flight, you can book an accommodation, or you can book a car. But it's really making sure That is integrated and we've done a lot of experimentation when people arrive in the destination and what help they still need today. We all think that they guest have nowhere to go, but today they don't know when they travel to a country which is unfamiliar for them. I don't know if this answers your question. Can use Sue just a little bit more on the difference between the connected trip and cross selling I mean on Expedia they, when you book your hotel they book your airline you book your hotel you book your car, but you're talking about something different. Yeah, it's a bit different because crusher has been out there for a long time that this that is not new, but This is something that broken could have done already a long time ago to just to put all of these segments online. But we feel that if you want to build a truly good experience for customer needs to be more integrated because I think you realize yourself if you want to take a long trip, it takes an enormous time. To either plan and get everything booked and that's actually where the friction that there's still out there that we are trying to reduce that time and make it much more efficient for consumers to do that and we'll take it in steps but we already took steps. We offer attractions for customers in 180 destinations We have transportation now in over three hundred destinations. You see that we are growing these type of products for customers. You know a lot about customer travel preferences. That's what your scientists do, that's what they study, that's what your data is on. Look ten years in the future and tell us something that will surprise us about what travel is going to be like. 10 years. Well, I always say that ideally you will get two trips in front of you and you can just choose and then everything will be planned and booked and that I mean that basically systems know where you like to travel what you like to do. That actually you don't need to think about that anymore because I think in travel with technology, there's still a lot to gain. Yeah. Because of the complex nature of travel. Fascinating vision. We hope you make it there. Thank you for making it here. Thank you. [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

What the Future of Travel Will Look Like

Travel

Booking.com’s Gillian Tans talks about what’s next for the travel industry. 
