Name: Booking Holding CEO is Upbeat about 2019: People are Traveling--A Lot
Uploaded: 2019-01-02
Duration: 4 min 57 s
Description: CEO Glenn Fogel says China travel is booming despite tough trade talk between U.S. and China.

[ MUSIC ] Happy New Year, great to have you here to talk about the year ahead and also your plans for your company Booking Holdings. Let's start off by talking about the economy from what you've seen so far. How do you think the U. S. economy will do this year? Well, it's hard to say. Obviously, we have a couple areas of some concern. We've seen that over the last few months where things seemed to be getting a little shakier. And trade war talk does not help anyone. But overall, when we look at our business we see people are traveling. We see the planes are filled. We see the hotels are filled. And we see people pretty happy about going out and, And travel. As you probably have heard there is so many economists who are predicting that the US economy at least will really slow down this year. Some are saying eventually it will go into a recession. Are you seeing any signs of that? It's one of things where I think it's very hard for anybody to really know what's gonna happen next. And for our point of view, we just have to keep on producing a great product, a great service. Some months, some quarters are gonna be better than others, no doubt about that. But we're in it for the long term. So does that mean that you're going ahead for this year with your expansion plans that you were planning on, making investments in your businesses or is there any Feeling like let's just wait and see before we do anything, given that all that volatility in the stock market, all the uncertainty about what's going to happen next with interest rates .>>> We're making investments to make our product better, we're not going to slow that down because we know that if the economy does have a little bit of a hiccup we know it's going to come back and we'll be better positioned for that. How do you feel about hiring? Are you going to be adding to the payrolls and hiring more people this year? We have a budget that scheduled how many people we need to help develop all these new servers and everything. And right now I don't see any changes from what our budgets are. Again, it's the ideas, if we don't build the stuff now that just means it's gonna be that much longer before we actually have that stuff ready and able to show to the consumer. That gives them a better experience. Let's talk a little bit more about how things are doing. Outside of the Unites States. You operate in more than 200 countries. Tell us which regions look like they'll grow the most in 2019. The areas of emerging markets, places where I've mentioned where people are beginning to move out of poverty into middle class. When they get into the middle class, they wanna travel. So you find a place like China for example, just tremendous opportunity, is really something that we're excited about. We call it the locomotive of the travel train. And it's pulling it, and it's pulling hard. Less than 10 % of the people in China have a passport to go explore the world. Those people, that other 90 % They're gonna wanna travel too, and that's just gonna be great for our business. Well, actually China is a huge market for your business. And you've been expanding there. But to what extent do the trade conflicts that have been going on between the United Sates and China impact your business plans? There's not doubt that Trade wars and things that get people upset, versus one country or another country, can hurt travel, it can. We're not seeing it yet, we have a dozen offices in China. And no doubt, there can be things where. Where there may be problems. If things get bad politically, that perhaps could hurt. I'm not that concerned about it. I believe that in the long run, it's in the interest of everybody to help promote more travel, not less travel. So I'm not that concerned about it yet. You have investments in C- trip which is the biggest travel company in China. You recently made a big investment in tv which people like to call the Uber of China. How could trade issues undermine those relationships for you? Look, it's always a a risk factor, it's that countries can do things at work not really in the Best long- term interest and do something that I would say would be irrational. But I think both governments that we're talking about here are rational players, rational actors, and I believe that they will continue to do what is best for their economies in the long run. And travel is one of those things I don't think anybody wants to cause any problems with. You know, that travel really brings people together, and I think that they're all in favor of it. You sound very bullish on China. Why are you so confident? If you travel yourself, and you look around that, my God, there are Chinese travelers here in these places. I was in Alaska a couple years ago, A place a little town of 200 people, they were Chinese tourists there. I was in Iceland two years ago, Chinese tourists there. Everywhere you see Chinese tourists because they are a billion three or a billion four of them. There are gonna be a lot more that are gonna wanna travel. So Glen we've been talking a lot about predictions for 2019, tell us about a travel destination that people will be talking about next year at this time. Cartagena, Colombia. Really interesting to see that one moving up. And, Colombia in general, people are saying Colombia is the new place to go. So, that's what I'm saying. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Booking Holding CEO is Upbeat about 2019: People are Traveling--A Lot

Leadership

CEO Glenn Fogel says China travel is booming despite tough trade talk between U.S. and China.