Seeing uptick in travel to Tokyo as USD rises against Japanese Yen, says Booking CEO Glenn Fogel

For this holiday week, get ready for crowds. The TSA set a single day screening record last week and says more records could fall in the coming days. Joining us now to discuss the surge in travel and what says about the consumer is Glenn Fogle, CEO of $130 billion online travel firm Booking Holdings. Glenn, it's great to have you back on overtime and, and let's start right there. What are you seeing in terms of travel trends this week? What is supposed to be a record setting week? Yeah, no, absolutely. Thanks for having me. And it will be a record, record July 4th week for the US Of course, we're very global, not that much of an impact elsewhere in the world, but certainly here in the States can be very crowded. And even in Europe, where you have a lot of outbound Americans going to Europe, I came back Friday night from Europe and it was crowded. OK. So in terms of those travel trends, where are people going? What does that look like from an air travel standpoint, a hotel standpoint? Are people spending a lot of money? Are they being more cost conscious in terms of what they're booking? Well, they're definitely spending a lot of money because prices are high, no doubt about that. And they're going to the typical places in the US We're seeing a lot of beach traffic happening. We're seeing people going, they're going to Ocean City, they want to go to Destin, they want to go to Panama City. And of course Vegas, always popular. And right now, we're seeing a lot of searches for, you know, Las Vegas outside. We're seeing the usual London, Paris, Tokyo, a big number right now. And I think that may be because the foreign exchange rates, I mean, I won't say it's free in Tokyo, but it's a lot cheaper than it used to be because the power of the US dollar against the Japanese yen. And then we'll eat. We're even seeing things like Barcelona. Barcelona is up 70% versus last year, which is really remarkable. Glenn, is there any bifurcation that you're seeing in consumer behavior? We're seeing it elsewhere in the economy where the more well heeled consumers are spending a lot, but then there's a mainstream consumer that's trying to spend less, that's maybe doing more car travel or or staying closer to home. Are you able to pick up any signal on that or is it just all kinds of travel booming equally well? There's definitely a lot of travel, but I have seen industry reports that do indicate what you're saying where the lower price things are not moving as fast as the luxury area. And that is that bifurcation, I think A2 speed economy in the US right now. And so how do you expect that to pan out? Is this the sort of travel that feeds on itself and continues into next year? Or are people still trying to get something out of their system or doing the sort of travel that they don't do every year, But do, you know, once every couple of years? Well, I think that the we used to call very, very recently revenge travel. I think that's because of the pandemic. That's kind of gone. We're until much more normalized rate right now, but that's still very positive. You know, if you look over many decades, travel has always increased faster than GDP. That's a little variation, of course, but that's the long term trend and that's the way we look at it. So yes, there may have been a little bit more travel last year or made the year before because people really want to get back in the travel mode from the pandemic. Now it's, but that's still great for us. OK. There's a lot of focus right now and what we're seeing with elections across the world this week. It's UK in focus, it's France in in focus. You've talked about geopolitics and the impact that's had specifically Middle East, I believe on your business at booking holdings. Are these types of dynamics you're tracking, do they impact travel or does it really take something like a conflict for for it to actually change people's patterns? Yeah. Look, there's always something happening somewhere in the world and we're very global. So there's always something that's going to impact travel. Middle East certainly an example that we called out in the last couple of earnings calls. And yes, people are always concerned when there is some type of potential threat not to travel there. There's also weather, there's a hurricane right now in the Caribbean that's going to affect some people. There's always something happening somewhere because we are so global and we are a large company. The individual localized things, they can impact a little bit, but they're local realized and they're usually relatively short term and we always want to look to the long term. And you have a sense of what's happened with the Airbnb effect. Or maybe to put it the other way, how strong are hotels right now or do they continue to be as a as a place to stay? Well, no, there's no doubt that both are very powerful, whether it's the homes area, which we are very strong in or the hotel, which we're also strong in. We're the only company that really does both at scale. It's something that I think that because there's so much travel, it's fortunate that there are homes for people to go to, otherwise the hotel prices would be that much higher. You know, I called out in our last call how our homes area, that's just the homes area. We're 2/3 the size of Airbnb and our growth rate has increased faster than Airbnb is over the last 11 out of the last 12 quarters. So we're doing very well in the homes area, but we're also doing well in the hotel area. And I am glad that there are enough places to stay so that, well, prices are high, they're not higher than they otherwise would be. So Booking Holdings closed at $3884.88 a share today. In a year where we're seeing this big trend across industries for stock splits and the appetite to lure more retail investors with them, are you thinking about it? Well, look, we're always evaluating every way we think that we can best do what's good for our investors and what's good for all of our stakeholders. I will again, I always point out that just because you slice up the pie and more slices does not make a bigger pie. But that doesn't mean that we wouldn't always look at if we think it's advantageous, we'll do it. But right now we have not announced anything.