Instinct has recently captured the imagination of the tech elite by promising to bridge the gap between intent and execution. Unlike traditional search engines or even first-generation chatbots, these agents aim to act as a personal concierge, navigating the web, comparing prices, and completing bookings through simple text or voice commands. However, when questioned about the disruptive potential of such technology, Fogel was quick to demystify the technical hurdles. "If we want to do Instinct, how hard do you think that would be?" Fogel asked the audience. "It wouldn’t be that hard if that’s all you had to do." For Fogel, the "hard part" of the travel industry is not the user interface or the natural language processing layer, but the massive, invisible infrastructure that sits behind the "book" button. His argument centers on the premise that while a startup can build a slick AI interface to scrape data and automate clicks, it cannot easily replicate the decades of trust, security protocols, and global customer support networks that Booking Holdings has spent billions of dollars perfecting. The core of Fogel’s skepticism regarding AI-first startups lies in the concept of institutional trust. In an era where deepfakes and data breaches are becoming increasingly common, Fogel believes that travelers are inherently conservative when it comes to their financial and personal data. "When it comes to safeguarding credit card details and other sensitive info, travelers want to deal with real people," Fogel argued. This sentiment reflects a broader industry belief that while AI can handle the "happy path"—a seamless booking where nothing goes wrong—it is woefully inadequate when things deviate from the plan. Travel is a high-stakes, high-friction industry. Unlike ordering a pizza or buying a book, a travel purchase involves high price points, complex logistics, and emotional investment. When a flight is canceled at 2:00 AM in a foreign country, or a hotel loses a reservation, a traveler does not want to interact with a decentralized AI agent that has no direct relationship with the service provider. They want a global entity with the leverage to fix the problem. Booking Holdings, which oversees a portfolio including Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Kayak, and OpenTable, operates in over 220 countries and territories. This scale allows them to manage the "unhappy path" through localized customer service and direct integrations with millions of accommodation partners. Furthermore, Fogel emphasized that the "transaction" is only a small slice of the overall travel experience. The real value lies in the "Connected Trip" vision—a strategy Fogel has championed for years. The goal is to create a frictionless environment where flights, accommodations, ground transportation, and attractions are all linked within a single ecosystem. While an AI agent might be able to book these components separately across different sites, it lacks the unified data layer necessary to provide a cohesive experience. If a flight is delayed, the Connected Trip ecosystem can automatically notify the hotel and adjust the car rental pickup time. Fogel suggests that standalone AI agents, lacking the deep supply-side integrations of Booking Holdings, are merely superficial layers that cannot offer this level of synchronization. Despite his dismissal of AI agents as a direct competitive threat, Fogel is far from an AI skeptic. Under his leadership, Booking Holdings has aggressively integrated generative AI into its own platforms. The company was among the first to launch an AI Trip Planner on Booking.com, utilizing Large Language Models (LLMs) to provide conversational travel advice. More recently, the company has solidified its position through a significant advertising and integration deal with OpenAI, as well as deep-rooted collaborations with Google’s Gemini-powered travel tools. Fogel views these partnerships not as a surrender to Big Tech, but as a strategic utilization of the best available tools to enhance his own platform’s capabilities. By integrating with OpenAI and Google, Booking Holdings ensures that its massive inventory of over 28 million listings is visible wherever travelers choose to start their journey. "We are moving forward with AI initiatives because they enhance the user experience," Fogel noted, "but the platform remains the anchor." Industry analysts point out that Booking Holdings’ financial muscle gives it a distinct advantage in the AI arms race. The company consistently spends billions of dollars annually on marketing and technology. In 2025, the company’s R&D expenditure reached record highs, focused specifically on refining machine learning models that predict user intent and optimize pricing in real-time. For a startup to compete, it would not only need to build a better AI but also acquire customers at a lower cost than Booking—a feat that has proven nearly impossible for even well-funded competitors over the last decade. The conversation at the Skift Global Forum also touched upon the changing nature of search. With the rise of "zero-click" searches and AI-generated answers on Google, there are concerns that traffic to traditional Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) could dwindle. Fogel, however, maintains that the relationship between OTAs and search engines is symbiotic. Google needs Booking’s high-quality, real-time inventory and pricing data to make its travel tools useful, and Booking benefits from Google’s top-of-funnel reach. The introduction of AI agents like Instinct might change the method of search, but Fogel believes the destination—the platform where the value is actually delivered—will remain the same. Expert perspectives within the travel tech sector suggest that Fogel’s "trust moat" is his strongest defense. "The travel industry is built on a foundation of reliability," says one industry analyst. "Booking Holdings isn’t just selling a hotel room; they are selling the assurance that the room will be there when you arrive. An AI agent is a tool, but Booking is an infrastructure." This sentiment was echoed throughout the forum, as other executives from Expedia and Airbnb also highlighted the importance of supply-side relationships and customer service as the ultimate barriers to entry for AI disruptors. Looking ahead, Fogel envisions a future where AI becomes invisible—a "utility" rather than a "product." He anticipates a world where the AI Trip Planner isn’t a separate feature, but the underlying engine of the entire website, anticipating needs before the user even articulates them. This proactive approach to travel planning is where Fogel sees the real potential of the technology. Instead of a user asking an agent to "book a trip to Paris," the platform might suggest a trip based on the user’s past preferences, calendar availability, and current price drops, requiring only a single tap to confirm. In his closing remarks at the forum, Fogel reiterated that the travel industry has seen many "disruptors" come and go, from the early days of meta-search to the rise of mobile-only booking apps. Each time, the incumbents who successfully integrated the new technology while maintaining their core service standards emerged stronger. By focusing on trust, security, and the complex logistics of the "Connected Trip," Fogel is betting that Booking Holdings will not only survive the AI revolution but will use it to further solidify its dominance. The message to the Silicon Valley crowd was clear: building a bot is easy, but building a global travel ecosystem is a multi-decade endeavor. As AI agents continue to capture headlines, Fogel and Booking Holdings remain focused on the "un-sexy" but essential aspects of travel: the APIs, the payment gateways, the customer service centers, and the millions of partner relationships that keep the world moving. For now, the "buzzworthy" agents are just that—buzz—until they can prove they can handle the weight of a traveler’s trust. Post navigation India Weighs Landmark Policy Shift to Allow Airport Operators to Own Airlines.
