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The new Dow came into being, at least officially, when behemoth DowDuPont split itself into three publicly-traded entities last year. And the now-independent ch

Dow | 2023 World's Most Admired Companies

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Dow | 2023 World's Most Admired Companies | Fortune

Glenn Fogel says despite recession worries and financial crises, there’s “pent-up demand” for travel 

Booking CEO: Travel will be last expense cut in a downturn

Leadership

Glenn. So great to see you to talk about what's going on in the travel business. And you recently reported revenues at your company booking holdings that revenue surged 56% in the past year. Everywhere you look, travel is booming. What's going on. Yeah, I know we are very pleased with those numbers. $17 billion of revenue. A real uh something that we, we, we didn't know when the pandemic was going to end. But certainly it seems that we are beyond the pandemic era and people had a long time where they wanted to travel but they couldn't travel. And then once people felt it was safe to travel, once government stopped their restrictions, everybody wanted to travel at once and almost, but there are some areas not quite as fast, Asia, a little bit slower, but it's coming back to now. Do you see travel continuing to boom. One of the things I would say is look, we've been through a lot recently. Well, one thing that we've all learned is that things can change very rapidly right now. We're very positive on travel. We talked about it in our earnings call a few weeks ago we talked how well January was and how optimistic we were. Now just recently, we see financial crisis in the US with some banks having some issues, we see a bank in Europe having a problem. And people have been saying maybe there's a recession on the horizon. What's really puzzling is that every day we're hearing news and bad news about a recession, inflation and about stock prices falling. Why are consumers still booking trips paying high prices for airline tickets or for hotels? It looks like a disconnect, doesn't it though, Suzie? The reason I think really is that pent up demand for so long? So many people wanted to travel so bad and they couldn't and they have a lot of traveling still to do. Maybe they won't do something else but they'll do their travel. What about China? It's going to open up for business. What could this mean for, for your company? Do you see more people booking trips to China? Look, we'd like to recover. We'd like to get some of that business back. Nobody's really sure how fast that's going to happen though. It's going to come back. Absolutely. And I think it's going to come back slower than a lot of people have been expecting. Tell us a little bit about connected travel booking is best known for booking hotels. But now you've gone beyond that, booking flights, arranging airport transfers, arranging for sightseeing experiences. How are customers responding to this? Service. Well, we call this our connected trip and we're building it out because we know how frustrating it can be for a consumer when you're traveling, having to deal with lots of different vendors. And if something goes wrong, having to make multiple calls, we know that's not the best way to travel. We know tying it all together into one seamless, frictionless way. That would make life much easier. That's why we're building out this connected trip. But to be perfectly honest, we're still very early on it. Well, you're sort of acting like a travel agent. But how is your service different than dealing with a, a traditional travel agent and having a connected trip? I want to have all the personalization and all the great relationship that I had with that old style human travel agent. But I want technology to make it even better in terms of what the best prices are, we should be able to come up with what the best price are. So I want all the part of the beautiful part of that human being by one done through technology and that's what we're working towards. You're also now offering bookings for homes and apartments when people are traveling. But when people think about renting a home or apartment, they think airbnb. So what does it take to beat the powerful and successful business of Airbnb? You know, it, it, it's kind of funny because um what you just said is so true of everybody in America. Now, we are an extremely global company. A lot of people don't know that, but, you know, we had over 300 offices around the world. We operate almost every country in the world in terms of where we can put somebody. If somebody in Europe is looking for a home or an apartment or a villa, they'll say booking dot com in the US. You're right. They'll probably say airbnb or well, more and more people are beginning to think of booking dot com as we continue to build up our inventory in the U. Si Am very confident that given the strength we have in that sector, this is what we call alternative accommodations, given the strength we have that in other parts of the world. There is no reason we shouldn't have as competitive and offering in the US as we do everywhere else. And I am very, very uh conscious of how important it is to have. Every single accommodation is available to a consumer, Glenn. You talk a lot about the importance of travel's role in climate change. You've been a strong advocate of protecting the environment and you also say that travel is a force of good because it connects people and cultures. But how do you reconcile the fact that airlines are big polluters and that undermines the impact of travel as a force for good. What do you say to that? And we understand that the industry does have a problem in terms of emissions and not being as sustainable as it should be. And we know that the suppliers, the airlines hotels are working that way, we're doing our part too. So in examples of flights on kayak, for example, there's actually a meter, you could do a way to find out how much in terms of emissions does the flight you're thinking of taking actually emit and that way you can choose flights that have less emissions. That's a great way for consumers to help out. But another way is our, what we call our travel sustainability badge with our accommodation partners. Over 400,000 partners are part of this and what they're doing is they do things in their business to make it more sustainable. And we then on our site will show that these properties are doing their part to be more sustainable for consumers who want to choose to go sustainably, they'll see those hotels or homes or whichever type of accommodation and they'll choose those and that will help incentivize other properties to be more sustainable. Well, you've written many op ed articles urging the travel industry to decarbonise. I'm just wondering to what extent are you getting through to business leaders, travel companies, even travelers. Are they doing enough? Well, absolutely. Everybody I think in the industry recognizes that there is a problem. Some people are doing more efforts than others. That's true. But when I talk to the CEO S of the major airlines, they are trying to do it when I talk to the CEO S of the major hotel chains, they're doing their part too. What's interesting is the consumer, consumers talk about how much they want to travel sustainably. I'm not seeing them using their wallets yet to prove that that is really true.

Interest rates are still rising, but so are opportunities – and a desire to – double down on transformation. How are business leaders prioritizing their investments in this environment? Between advances in generative AI, core business transformation, and pledges to address climate change and greater supply chain resilience where are global companies planning to allocate their dollars? We share the different paths leaders are considering as they prioritize investments and discuss findings from CEOs surveyed the first quarter of 2023.  

Fortune CEO Initiative Virtual Meeting : Prioritizing Investments in Today’s Environment 

We share the different paths leaders are considering as they prioritize investments and discuss findings from CEOs surveyed the first quarter of 2023.  

Fortune CEO Initiative Virtual Meeting

You missed out on some sleep during the workweek and are looking forward to sleep in and pay off that "sleep debt" once the weekend rolls around. But is that actually good for you? Sleep scientist Dr. Rebecca Robbins breaks down our sleep cycle and everything you should know about our natural circadian rhythms.

Fact or Fiction: Is it possible to pay off your sleep debt?

Health

Dr. Rebecca Robbins of Harvard Medical School breaks down sleep cycles, circadian rhythm, and "sleep debt".

Is it possible to pay off your sleep debt?

Dr. Rebecca Robbins of Harvard Medical School explains.

One of the most common trends in our population is curtailing the amount of sleep that we get during the work week and thinking that we can repay our sleep on the weekend, doing things that we often view as luxurious like sleeping in. But believe it or not, sleeping in is one of the worst things that we can do for our sleep spending enough time sleeping is of course one of the most important and central parts of what we're increasingly referring in the field to sleep health. It is a myth to think that we simply crawl into the sheets and enter the state of sleep and then we wake up and haven't moved an inch to the contrary. Sleep is actually a very rich and very variegated process. The gold standard of sleep measurement is something called policy sonography and that is largely done in the context of a laboratory setting. Policy. Sonography simply refers to multiple modes of measurement. We're gonna be monitoring your brainwaves, your respiratory effort, your heart rate, a host of different things that allow us to understand which stage of sleep you're in at which time Over the course of your sleep. When we crawl into the sheets at night we enter some of the lighter stages of sleep and we're entering sleep slowly and it's a stage stage one and two that are marked by slightly slower brain waves in the wake state. But as we're entering sleep, this is a period of time in the lighter stages of our sleep at night. They were very able to be awoken by noises or things that are going on around us. Then we enter stage three deep sleep, which is the closest thing we get to hibernation as human beings in a 24 hour day and then something fascinating happens after about 20 minutes in a healthy sleeper, we enter our first rapid eye movement period of the the dreaming period of our night actually plays a really vital role for our brain to bring up events that happened from the day. The rapid eye movement sleep is where we believe. We got a lot of the benefits cognitively of our sleep and our ability to retain and remember information. What's so fascinating is that the structure of sleep is actually intact almost remarkably no matter the amount of sleep that you get. So what's so fascinating is that the human body and the brain adapt to that maybe shorter period of sleep. But then in the nights following those nights of curtailed and shortened sleep, our body and our brains actually spend a little bit more time in rapid eye movement sleep, we call this rem rebound because such a vital stage for our cognitive performance and excellence. Our sleep is governed by two processes. The first is called our home a static sleep drive and what that refers to is our overall sense of sleepiness. That homo static drive simply builds with the amount of hours that we've been awake over the course of the day and then that declines it's repaid with our sleep over the course of our nighttime. The other process that has a really significant role in our sleep is something called our circadian rhythm. Now that rhythm as it sounds eggs and flows over the 24 hour day in a very rhythmic, beautiful and predictable fashion and our circadian drive determines the times that we're optimally alert and times that work optimally sleepy over the course of a 24 hour day. The circadian system is most influenced by our environment and the pattern of light and darkness in the world around us. The on switch to the sleep phase of our circadian rhythm is darkness going into an envoy is free of light when we're ideally able to align our wake up time with sunlight exposure. That flips the off switch, stops the floodgates of melatonin and allows us to be alert and go about our days without the presence of those time cues. Our circadian rhythm becomes very confused and unsure when it should be awake and when it should be sleepy. Now when we change our sleep time, believe it or not even one hour makes a big difference. So if you've ever slept in late on a saturday morning and wake woken up 234 hours beyond your normal work week, Wake up time and felt really groggy. The circadian system is why, because what you've done is you've actually done the same thing as popped in an airplane and fly into a new time zone so your brain is starting to play catch up. We often think that sleep is just relegated to the nighttime hours or just the time that you plan to start sleeping. But believe it or not, a good night's sleep really starts as soon as we wake up. So things to keep in mind over the course of the day are getting natural light exposure. That helps us think our circadian rhythm to the pattern of light and darkness around us exposure to natural sunlight also can boost our energy. So ideally what we want to do, not only get enough sleep, but one of the core tenants of sleep is keeping a consistent sleep schedule. We're all so unique and different and diverse that we each have a different sleep need now do your best to protect that night in and night out.

The impending economic downturn is top of mind for all businesses, yet PwC’s Pulse Survey shows that the majority of business leaders are confident they can achieve near-term growth. How can you help solve key issues and generate value for their companies amid recessionary headwinds? Join Fortune’s Alan Murray and PwC’s Mohamed Kande for a conversation on maintaining operational excellence and agility in today’s unpredictable business environment.

CEO Initiative Leadership Call: Recession Readiness and the Way Ahead

Conferences

How can you help solve key issues and generate value for their companies amid recessionary headwinds?

 Recession Readiness and the Way Ahead

Join Fortune’s Alan Murray and PwC’s Mohamed Kande for a conversation on maintaining operational excellence and agility in today’s unpredictable business environment.

Dow

Company Information

World's Most Admired Companies
As of 2/1/2023

Dow

Company Information

World's Most Admired CompaniesAs of 2/1/2023

World's Most Admired Companies
As of 2/1/2023