Top 55 Gillian Tans Quotes

When you start very young and you start to work, you’re going to fail. That’s how you learn.

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.

Employing women is good for business.

From the early days, Booking.com has been disruptive. Our aim is to create the best product for our customers, and we do that through constant innovation and testing.

I don’t think there’s ever a wrong answer as long as people are willing to learn, share. You’re never done learning.

We will invest more into China to make sure that our brand gets more known to Chinese customers.

Using science to tell us what customers are looking for is second nature for us here.

Booking.com is one of the biggest translation companies in the world.

We want to make sure that we have the right products for Chinese people.

With any previous transition we made with technology, it hasn’t been the case that we need less people.

If you’re afraid of failure or getting it wrong, you’ll never truly innovate or disrupt the market.

I’ve always been curious and taken many risks, but that is quite atypical for a woman. On the other hand, I think that’s the only way to grow beyond yourself.

Both business and leisure travellers are enjoying unprecedented levels of choice.

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.

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.

The mission of Booking is to empower people to experience the world. Whatever people want to do, wherever they want to go, they can book it with us.

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.

Traveling changes you as a person. If you buy something, it’s so different than if you put your money into traveling.

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.’

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.

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.

For me, it’s about taking things that do not take a lot of space. Don’t take a lot of shoes. I tend to pack a lot of dresses, for instance, because they take up less space.

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.

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.

Booking.com started with just a website, but we’ve always thought of our company as being more than just a website.

From our earliest days, Booking.com has been deploying technology to help strip the friction out of travel.

What always drove me was my curiosity. That’s what made me join Booking and not be afraid to leave a very successful job and then go into a startup.

And as a woman, you need to take risks. Don’t stay too long in your own swim lane.

Booking travel is not like shopping or groceries or booking a restaurant. It’s much less frequent, so understanding what works just takes a lot more time.

I am a woman, and I am proud to say that I work in technology. But I also recognise that the combination of those two facts puts me in the minority.

People always travel no matter what.

I think companies need to take more ownership over the gender gap themselves because if everybody does that, then overall, it will improve.

Our mission is to empower people to experience the world.

There are a lot of threats out there. Amazon can enter the travel market. Google could enter the accommodation space. But that is not something that we actively focus on.

In the beginning of Booking.com, we were travelling around Europe a lot. Sometimes we’d do five cities in a week.

The move to Internet-enable travel booking is creating massive convenience, efficiency, and savings for consumers.

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.

There are more and more properties joining us to benefit from and leverage our global online marketing expertise.

Traveling is an experience that you can always carry with you. It makes the world come together more so we understand each other better.

India is a fast-growth market and is developing a lot. We continue to increase our partners here and make investments.

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.

My mother was from an entrepreneurial family and very creative. She always pushed me to take risks, to do things I wouldn’t have thought of.

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, people should just say ‘give me the best hotel in a certain date in a certain location.’

We found we were able to create better, customer-centric product features more quickly with a more diverse product team.

China’s domestic travel is increasing, and that’s why we are building our teams here in China.

Technology’s great, but you can only be as good in technology as your people are.

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.

We believe in global scalability with local relevance.

Every customer is different, and the travel experience is completely fluid, but the end goal is to find the best solutions.

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 know that companies which have more women in leadership positions have a better performance.

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.

Booking.com has been very good at performance marketing. That’s how we grew our business.

There’s no point being at the airport longer than needed.