Keep pulling the thread on Glenn Fogel.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Booking Holdings laid off 25% of its employees.
Over the past 25 years, Booking Holdings has delivered a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 30% to its investors.
Over a 25-year period, Booking Holdings' stock price grew from a reverse split-adjusted $6 per share to approximately $4,800 per share, an 800x increase.
The business originating from the acquisition of Booking.com now constitutes approximately 90% of Booking Holdings' overall business.
Glenn Fogel predicts that generative AI will enable a "connected trip" experience, acting as a sophisticated travel advisor that can proactively and automatically adjust a user's itinerary based on real-time data like weather forecasts.
Under CEO Glenn Fogel's leadership, Booking.com has expanded from an agency model for hotels to a multi-vertical platform including flights, car rentals, attractions, and insurance.
Booking Holdings has built a large and strategically important payments program, shifting from a pure agency model to one where it processes customer payments directly.
Booking.com has been a consistent advertiser in the Super Bowl for many years.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Booking Holdings had approximately 26,000 to 27,000 employees.
Shortly after its IPO in 2000, Priceline.com's market capitalization was approximately $15 billion before nearly going bankrupt by the end of the year.
In the early 2000s, Booking.com was an early and effective adopter of buying ads on Google, which was a key differentiator at the time.
Booking Holdings' successful acquisition strategy for non-US companies involved not integrating them heavily and allowing the successful local teams to continue operating independently.