Booking.com CEO: Higher Consumer Expectations Bring New Challenges

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of video interviews from the Skift Take Studio, presented by Mastercard, that were filmed at this year’s Skift Global Forum.

During the 2016 Skift Global Forum, we had the pleasure of speaking with a host of the travel industry’s top leaders from across every sector.

And after first speaking to them on stage in front of the 1,000+ audience, we took another few minutes with them to ask follow up questions and get more insight in our backstage Skift Take Studio.

Booking.com CEO Gillian Tans predicted that mobile bookings will cross the 50 percent threshold on her site within a year or two and cited the challenge of higher consumer expectations, which will require accelerated investments to keep up. On the phasing out of the companies Booking Now last-minute app, Tans said the Booking.com realized that its customers wanted everything in its main app rather than having to open another one just for last-minute bookings.

This series is presented by Mastercard