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Starting a business and building a product are not for the faint of heart. You have to learn to not let little disappointments get you down and to stay focused on the big picture.
I travel very light. I never want to check a bag. My only standards are a few sets of clothes, my white sneakers, my blue backpack, and my laptop. I don't have any special things otherwise.
If firms were made to hire according to quotas, it might optimize the percentage of women in the industry, but that doesn't necessarily translate into more quality products for the customer.
Typically, I get to the office around eight o'clock. I have a very mixed schedule, and I always try to keep time for things that are not planned. You need time for whatever might pop up in the week.
Recognizing that female participation in technology is lower than it should be, we are committed to bolstering female tech talent, eliminating obstacles and challenges they face, and fostering diversity.
We are putting a lot of investments behind building customer loyalty. We need to make sure we keep investing in the right tech that will help customers. If we keep doing that well, we will keep progressing.
One in five of our customers books for business. But it's scaling very fast. As a result, we have tools for medium or small-sized companies to allow them set their price and give basic reporting functionality.
Eventually, we want to be able to say, whether in your own neighborhood or a city across the globe, our technology will be needed to break through barriers - whether it's money, time, languages, or simply choice.
The culture of Booking.com has been very good for me because it's a culture where you're allowed to fail. When you think about taking risks, if it's OK to fail, you actually do a lot more. And you learn a lot quicker.
Understand tipping culture. Whereas Americans tip 15-20% when dining out, most European countries don't tip, as a service charge is typically included in the bill. Make sure you're not over-tipping by doing research before traveling.
If you run a global business, it's so important that you understand what happens in each place, and you can't do that remotely. I don't want to go anywhere and leave and not have seen the people who work for us. That doesn't feel good.
Things like chatbots, machine learning tools, natural language processing, or sentiment analysis are applications of artificial intelligence that may one day profoundly change how we think about and transact in travel and local experiences.
Pack snacks. Food prices once you pass through airport security or within blocks of a major tourist attraction can be double the price. Pack travel-friendly snacks or visit a grocery store in the destination you are visiting to get a better price.
Whether you are checking luggage or bringing a carry-on, always weigh and measure your bags to make sure they are below the airline's size and weight restrictions. Excess baggage fees can be costly. Avoid all baggage fees by only bringing a carry-on.
There are a few books I can recommend, but one you should read for sure is 'Do More Faster,' a book full of advice for young entrepreneurs. Looking back at the early days of Booking.com, I recognize a lot of things that feature in this the book - like 'fail fast, learn quickly.'
There is a misperception among job seekers that opportunities for women in tech exist only for those with coding or engineering experience. To be sure, technology firms do need women with these skills, but they also need women with expertise in other areas, like marketing and finance.
An American customer can book in English all over the world, but also, somebody from Japan or China can book in their own language everywhere. We translate all of our content into these languages, and that's quite unique. We service our direct customers - the innkeepers - as well in their own language.
We have many accommodation owners - people who own small hotels, villas and bungalows - and the digital economy has opened up a world of possibility for these business owners. Now, they can sell to and communicate with people around the world, and where Booking.com comes in is to help these accommodation owners adapt to the digital world.
On the one hand, you have markets such as Singapore and Thailand, with an extremely strong inbound booker market and a well-developed tourism industry. You also have markets that are just opening up to tourists, like Myanmar, that have massive growth potential and then markets that are extremely fragmented within themselves such as Indonesia.
A long time ago, we had to build interfaces to connect with other companies, and I thought that was a great idea. The company had to pay a lot of money to build it and basically launched it, but our whole operating system almost broke. So, we couldn't continue it. In the end, I had to go on the train to Paris to explain that I had spent millions.