Booking.com sees AI as a research tool rather than a booking threat. While 64% of travelers in Asia-Pacific use AI to plan trips, the actual bookings flow elsewhere. Booking Holdings reports that traffic referred directly by large language models accounts for well under 1% of room nights.
Laura Houldsworth, Booking.com's vice president for Asia-Pacific, explained the disconnect. "They might be searching on Claude one minute, ChatGPT another, Gemini, then rounding out with Google, and then coming to us directly," she said. Travelers jump between multiple AI chatbots during research but don't stay loyal to a single platform for booking.
Booking.com's strategy focuses on capturing travelers at the moment they are ready to pay. The company has experience with superapps, where daily use never converted to travel spending. Houldsworth indicated Booking.com faces a similar challenge with AI: staying relevant when customers are prepared to complete a purchase, regardless of where their research began.