AI Cuts Booking Holdings Customer Service Costs 10% as Volumes Rise

Generative artificial intelligence enabled Booking Holdings to reduce its customer service costs year over year, even as the company handled 10% more bookings, Booking Holdings Chief Financial Officer Ewout Steenbergen said Wednesday (Feb. 18).

Speaking during the company’s quarterly earnings call, Steenbergen said the customer service cost per booking dropped by 10% year over year.

“I think a colleague CFO said during a call last quarter, I’ve forgotten who it was, ‘Gen AI is everywhere except for in the P&L [profit and loss statement],’” Steenbergen said. “I’m very proud that we can point to a line item in the P&L where we actually do have meaningful results on the efficiency basis.”

Booking Holdings’ travel and related platforms include Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Kayak and OpenTable.

The firm has also seen encouraging metrics around its first implementation of agentic AI, Steenbergen said during the call. The numbers here are small but promising, he said.

“More engagement from our traveler customers, faster search, better conversion, lower cancellation rates and positive customer satisfaction are a couple of things we’re seeing,” Steenbergen said.

Booking Holdings rolled out several gen AI and agentic AI tools in 2025 and continues to do so in 2026, CEO and President Glenn Fogel said during the call. The latest additions include tools to serve customers and tools to serve partners.

The AI-powered capabilities rolled out in 2025 include natural language search to help customers discover and plan trips, smart filters and summaries to help them make more informed booking decisions, and AI agents that provide better, faster support, Fogel said.

“Based on our learnings, in 2026 we will focus on further connecting these agentic capabilities to offer a more unified and personalized experience, deploying the technology in the places where it can have meaningful impact for customers and partners,” Fogel said.

Booking Holdings has also positioned itself to accommodate any changes AI tools make in the source of demand from customers. The firm has done so by partnering with several leading AI companies.

“As general-purpose LLMs [large language models] increasingly create new top-of-funnel entry points for travel, and generative AI drives increased global online participation and spend, our proactive engagement with major technology and AI players is positioning us to meet whatever level of demand ultimately migrates from traditional search firms to horizontal LLMs,” Fogel said.