Booking Holdings, Inc. reported a measurable gain from AI on its most recent earnings call. The company said customer-service cost per booking fell about 10 percent year over year, even as bookings rose roughly 10 percent. CFO Ewout Steenbergen attributed the decline to generative AI tools deployed in support operations. He said the result was visible in the company’s operating expense line and contributed to improved margins.
The disclosure comes as large language models are increasingly used for travel planning and research. In an interview published a day before the earnings call by McKinsey & Company, CEO Glenn Fogel acknowledged the risk that transactions could eventually occur within LLM ecosystems rather than on Booking’s own platforms. “There’s certainly always a risk,” he said.
Booking has shown AI can improve its cost structure. The harder question is whether it can also protect its position in distribution.
