Booking.com Takes on Airbnb, But Don't Call it a Clone
*By Conor White*
Booking.com recently surpassed five million listings for homes and apartments for rent, announcing the online travel site as a worthy competitor to Airbnb.
But Booking.com's chief executive said in an interview Tuesday with Cheddar that the comparisons end there.
"Everything is instantly bookable at Booking, we don't charge customer fees, so there's some principle differences as to the products we offer customers," said the CEO, Gillian Tans. "We want to make sure we grow this segment in a way that customers know Booking.com today."
Booking.com said it has the largest online selection of vacation rentals to cater to a growing number of millennial travelers who prefer to stay in homes and apartments instead of hotels.
"The growing segment in homes and apartments is, of course, something that appeals to millennials, but also to families," said Tans, who was attending the Collision conference in New Orleans this week. "But you also see that providing insight into what can you do once you arrive at the destination is something that we are expanding."
Booking.com's focus on experiential travel is on point. According to a study by the Adventure Travel Trade Association, 54 percent of travelers plan to participate in an adventure activity on their next trip.
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/booking-com-surpasses-five-million-listings).
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Christopher Atkeson, roboticist and a professor at the Robotics Institute and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, joins Cheddar Reveals to discuss what the robots of the future will look like, the role they will play in society and different industries, and if they will they ever reach human-level sentience.
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