Booking: skyrocketing demand despite record travel prices

Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel said that despite record-high travel prices and demand soaring for spring and summer. In the same way, he considers that the trips will continue to rise due to the cost of fuel due to the war between Russia and Ukraine.

“When you have two years of people not traveling the way they want to travel and you have a lot of savings accumulated in that period of time, prices can be really high and people are like, ‘I don’t care. I just want to travel. I want to go somewhere,” Fogel said in an interview with CNBC on “Closing Bell.”

And he recommended that “if you’re planning to take a summer trip, prices are going up right now. I don’t think it’s going to change at all,” Fogel warned. However, premium travelers who prefer international travel are used to prices and the fact that it is the segment that has not fully recovered. For airlines, it is one of the most important niches.

“Asia is not coming back as fast as, say, Western Europe, which is something we’ve seen for quite some time. There is also, of course, the tragedy of the war in Ukraine, which has definitely impacted the countries of the East, Europe a little bit,” said Fogel.

As reported by REPORTUR.us, Booking receives a heavy blow “for unacceptable behavior,” as the European Union will curb the abuses of large platforms through an agreement approved between legislators with the new “Digital Markets Law.” (Booking gets hit hard for “unacceptable behavior.”)

This new rule will end parity clauses, which do not allow hotels to offer lower prices within their direct channels and provide more transparency for OTA published listings.