Booking Holdings Glenn Fogel: Skift Global Forum 2023

05.10.2023 - 17:39 / skift.com / Dennis Schaal / Rashaad Jorden / Glenn Fogel

Booking Holdings has viewed its planned $1.7 billion acquisition of Swedish-based company eTraveli Group as a coup in its attempts to boost its flight business. However, the European Commission has blocked the deal, arguing that the deal would increase Booking.com’s hotel market share in Europe.

Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel addressed the ongoing issue at the recent Skift Global Forum in New York City. He also touched on commission fees for partners and New York City’s new short-term rental regulations, among other issues.

Watch the full video or read a transcript of it below.

Dennis Schaal: Good morning, we’re back. More importantly, you’re back, Glenn. Thanks.

Glenn Fogel: I’m back.

Schaal: Thanks for being here.

Fogel: Well, thanks for having me again. It’s just beautiful. I mean, this is so much better than last year.

Schaal: And look at the beautiful weather too. Let’s talk about the weather. There’s a lot going on. So on Monday, the European Commission blocked your $1.7 billion deal to buy Sweden’s eTraveli Group. They’re a flight technology and (online travel agency).

Can we show a slide? This is a quote from you in 2022, “Given the strategic importance of flights to our connected trip offering, we believe it is critical to bring eTraveli’s flight expertise and technology in-house while also unlocking some of the limitations that exist in our current commercial agreement.” Critical, did I say that? Now, what, Glenn?

Fogel: It is extremely disappointing to me that the regulators decided to block this transaction. I absolutely believe they’re wrong on the facts, wrong on the law, and it’s wrong policy. That being said, for the business, we’ve had a relationship with eTraveli for many years and we recently extended that agreement for many more years. So we are going to continue to build out our flight business, which has been doing very, very well.

This is unfortunate in terms of it will not allow us as quickly and as easily to improve the flight product that we have right now. Therefore, that is bad for consumers. That is bad, particularly, for people who have been pleading for a better flight experience. Everyone here, we all fly. We all buy our tickets, many of us do it ourselves online and we know it’s not as easy as it should be. There are a lot of ways to improve it.

Now, I can’t get into the minds of the people, the regulators in terms of what their thinking is. I can say a couple things that I know to be true, and these are, first of all, we are not a dominant player in travel in Europe. The numbers that I saw some of the regulars put out, I don’t know where they come from but they’re not right. I also know the fact that us doing a flight business certainly would help our hotel