Inside Booking.com: The Story of Ousted CEOs, Internal Tensions
These journalists pierced the prevailing narratives about what was actually going on behind the scenes at Booking.com.
Beyond the press releases and public appearances by Booking Holdings executives, what was really going on at Booking.com's Amsterdam headquarters behind closed doors – including during monthly Freaky Fridays booze-fests?
Three Dutch investigative journalists with the newspaper NRC tell the story in the 2021 book, "The Machine." Originally published in Dutch, it has received little mention in English-language press and the authors say it is set to be adapted into a fictional TV show on a Dutch public broadcasting channel.
'Booking is one of the few European tech companies that turned into a global success," one of the journalists, Stijn Bronzwaer, told Skift recently. "Everyone is familiar with the website, but no one knows the people and the stories behind this company. We felt it was time to reconstruct this piece of internet history.' The other authors were Merijn Rengers and Joris Kooiman.
The book makes several references to Skift's oral history of Booking.com, published in 2016, but goes much deeper in its reporting. It details Booking.com's history from its founding in the Amsterdam in 1996; the tensions between the American and Dutch employees, and then between the Dutch and the Brits; takes you behind closed doors where one CEO gets fired and another is forced to resign; documents local backlash and strategic decisions.
Booking Holdings, which learned that the book was being written before publication, fact-checked it, Bronzwaer said. Booking Holdings did not comment on the book as a whole, but has not disputed key findings.
Following are highlights from "The Machine:"
Gillian Tans Got Fired as CEO of Booking.com on June 20, 2019
Gillian Tans, who was CEO of Booking.com and among the highest-profile female executives in online travel, was a member of what the book calls the "Dutch Mafia," an informal name for the group o
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