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Booking Executive Accuses Google Gemini and ChatGPT of Unfair Practices Against Small Hotels
In 2026, with AI search reshaping how traffic is allocated, Glenn Fogel, CEO of global travel giant Booking Holdings, issued a stark warning: Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT are leveraging their technological dominance to push small and medium hotels into a precarious situation.
Fogel noted that while traditional search models also involved competitive weighting, users could at least scroll to see more results. Today's AI assistants work completely differently.
Single Recommendation: When travelers ask an AI for a budget hotel in central Munich, it often returns just one to three algorithmically selected "best options."
Hidden Independent Hotels: Small and medium hotels without big data support or dedicated AI optimization teams are disappearing from search results. Fogel argued that this heavily filtered recommendation mechanism denies small businesses a fair chance to be discovered.
Interestingly, Fogel—who previously criticized the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) as "stupid regulation"—now stands on the side of regulators.
Supporting Audits: He expressed strong support for the EU's antitrust review of AI search results generated by Google's Gemini. He believes it's essential to ensure that large AI platforms do not prioritize their own booking services or direct traffic only to big conglomerates paying high "protection fees."
Strategic Alliance: Although Booking itself is designated a "digital gatekeeper," when facing cross-industry pressure from Google, a "super platform," Booking has chosen to align with regulators to protect its supplier ecosystem.
To avoid being completely "disintermediated" by AI platforms, Booking announced an additional $700 million investment in 2026 for its own AI marketing tools and the "Connected Travel" program:
Helping small hotels without technical capabilities restructure their data so they can be more easily recognized by various AI agents. Fogel firmly believes that while AI can book rooms, handling complex "human-machine interaction" services such as flight delays and hotel cancellations remains Booking's moat.
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In 2026, with AI search reshaping how traffic is allocated, Glenn Fogel, CEO of global travel giant Booking Holdings, issued a stark warning: Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT are leveraging their technological dominance to push small and medium hotels into a precarious situation.
Fogel noted that while traditional search models also involved competitive weighting, users could at least scroll to see more results. Today's AI assistants work completely differently.
Single Recommendation: When travelers ask an AI for a budget hotel in central Munich, it often returns just one to three algorithmically selected "best options."
Hidden Independent Hotels: Small and medium hotels without big data support or dedicated AI optimization teams are disappearing from search results. Fogel argued that this heavily filtered recommendation mechanism denies small businesses a fair chance to be discovered.
Interestingly, Fogel—who previously criticized the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) as "stupid regulation"—now stands on the side of regulators.
Supporting Audits: He expressed strong support for the EU's antitrust review of AI search results generated by Google's Gemini. He believes it's essential to ensure that large AI platforms do not prioritize their own booking services or direct traffic only to big conglomerates paying high "protection fees."
Strategic Alliance: Although Booking itself is designated a "digital gatekeeper," when facing cross-industry pressure from Google, a "super platform," Booking has chosen to align with regulators to protect its supplier ecosystem.
To avoid being completely "disintermediated" by AI platforms, Booking announced an additional $700 million investment in 2026 for its own AI marketing tools and the "Connected Travel" program:
Helping small hotels without technical capabilities restructure their data so they can be more easily recognized by various AI agents. Fogel firmly believes that while AI can book rooms, handling complex "human-machine interaction" services such as flight delays and hotel cancellations remains Booking's moat.
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