No Shock or Awe at Booking Holdings About Airbnb’s Buy of HotelTonight
Booking Holdings’ Glenn Fogel, whose background is in mergers and acquisitions, was undoubtably not surprised when Airbnb bought HotelTonight. We’d be shocked if he and others hadn’t kicked the tires.
When it comes to Airbnb's more than $400 million acquisition of HotelTonight, Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel said it was hardly a secret that Airbnb would be expanding its hotel business since it already "brought on boutique hotels."
Referring to HotelTonight as a "very, very small company," Fogel said Tuesday he's not sure that adding the hotel-booking startup represents anything different than what Airbnb previously discussed. Fogel was speaking at a Bank of America Merrill Lynch retail technology conference.
"And we should've known that Airbnb had wanted to expand out beyond just doing home, and they're going to do that," Fogel said. "We believe that it's a little bit — it's sort of flattering to us — because we've always believed that the right presentation to a consumer is to show all the types of accommodations. And we've always believed that, so they started copying us and doing that."
Fogel, unsurprisingly, argued that Booking.com, which mixes hotels with alternative accommodations and doesn't charge a booking fee to travelers, provides "a better, better result."
Airbnb declined to comment on Fogel's remarks.
