缤客CEO看好2019年，因为人们出门旅行越来越多

想知道今年美国经济发展如何，格伦·福格尔说去机场看看就知道了。

“人们都在旅行，飞机满舱，酒店客满。人们都在高高兴兴地出门旅行。”他说。

福格尔在全球最大的在线旅游公司Booking Holdings担任首席执行官，掌握着相关统计数据。公司总部位于康涅狄格州诺沃克，为数百万用户提供220多个国家的酒店、机票、民居、公寓，租车和餐馆的预订服务。该公司旗下拥有客涯、租车网站rentalcars.com、订餐网站OpenTable、priceline.com、booking.com和agoda.com等。各项业务收入已达127亿美元，也跻身《财富》美国500强公司榜单。

他担心什么？“贸易战谈判对各方都没有好处。”他指的是美国对中国商品征巨额关税，以及两国之间艰难的贸易谈判。缤客在中国有不少业务，因为旗下各公司在中国有超过一千名员工。此外，缤客对中国最大的在线旅行网站携程持有不少股份，在流行的打车软件滴滴出行也做过大笔投资。

目前福格尔认为，美国和中国有希望达成贸易协议。“我认为从长远来看，推动人们更多旅行而不是更少旅行，对各方都有利，”他说。 “所以我不是很担心。”（财富中文网）

译者：冯丰

If you want to know how the U.S. economy will do this year, Glenn Fogel says just go to the airport and look around.

“We see people are traveling. We see the planes are filled. We see that the hotels are filled. We see people pretty happy about going out and getting travel,” he says.

As the CEO of Booking Holdings (BKNG), the world’s largest online travel company, Fogel has the stats on all that. The Norwalk, Connecticut based company makes reservations for millions of its customers at hotels, airlines, homes, apartments, rental cars, and restaurants in more than 220 countries. It owns Kayak, rentalcars.com, OpenTable, priceline.com, booking.com and agoda.com. All that business adds up to revenues of $12.7 billion and a ranking on the Fortune 500 list of the biggest companies in America.

What worries him? “Trade war talk doesn’t help anyone,” he says, referring to big U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods and tough trade talk between the two countries. Booking has a lot at stake in China where it has a more than a thousand employees working at a dozen companies owned by Booking. Booking also has significant investments in C-Trip, China’s largest online travel agency, and Didi, the country’s popular taxi-hailing service.

For now, Fogel is hopeful that the U.S. and China will reach a trade agreement. “I believe that in the long run it’s in the interest of everybody to help promote more travel, not less travel,” he says. “So I’m not so concerned about it yet.”