From Friction to Flow: Inside Booking.com’s Connected Trip Vision

The global traveler has changed – and fast. From flexible payments to deeply personalized journeys, the line between digital convenience and authentic experience is blurring. Behind that shift sits FinTech, an unlikely driver of connection and creativity in the travel world.

Daniel Marovitz, Senior Vice President of FinTech at Booking.com, has watched these shifts unfold in real time. Ahead of his session at Skift Global Forum East, Marovitz shares how technology and finance are merging to serve travelers in smarter, more human ways.

“Philosophical out of the gate! I think there are a few things at work here. While the ‘You Only Live Once YOLO’ feeling post-pandemic has backed up a bit, that emotion is still there. People want special, authentic, real experiences—perhaps because so much of life is lived online in a synthetic mode.

There is the sense that stuff is well, just stuff, it doesn’t enhance you, improve you, grow you, change you and experiences do. Travel is perhaps the ultimate ‘experience,’ and always has been, because by definition every moment of travelling is different—so not much is changing there. What is changing is the technology landscape, which is where we shine.

The more we can alleviate remaining frictions in the travel process and unlock more seamless, end-to-end journeys via the new technologies we leverage, the more our travelers will be able to focus their time on truly immersing themselves in their travels and the more our partners can focus on making those experiences unforgettable.”

“Maybe I’m biased, but scaling our payments offering has been a gamechanger. Travel is fraught with the complexities of cross-border, cross-currency payments, and the tension between the point of booking and the travel itself. We launched our first payments solutions almost a decade ago, formalizing our Fintech business unit in 2021, and in that time we’ve made huge strides to remove those frictions, provide more flexibility to travelers and more certainty to partners.

Payments volumes have tripled in that period, and last year almost 60% of bookings were processed on our payments platform. Today, that means a traveler from the UK can start paying for their holiday home in South Africa in installments, several months in advance, while the small business owner that they are ultimately transacting with in Stellenbosch gets their full deposit paid at the time of booking, direct to their bank account, including optimized currency exchange.

As we continue to embed our vision for the connected trip, payments will further unlock the possibilities here across verticals with solutions for incredibly different transaction structures and financial needs. So maybe it’s not the sexiest or most cutting technology but it is the area that has massive impact.”

“Keeping our customers front and center has always been at the heart of the business, and so we continue to invest significantly in making sure we deeply understand their needs and wants, often before they even know themselves. We have dedicated research teams and industry experts constantly exploring those expectations and the key changes in consumer behaviours that could indicate a future shift.

We run dozens of experiments a week in Fintech to test, learn, optimise, and change. Whether it’s leveraging the latest AI innovations to meet their expectation for a more personalised, intuitive booking journey, or anticipating new and evolving payments trends like the boom in cashless payment methods in Asia, we’re constantly asking ourselves how we can best serve our customers and add value with every development we pursue.”

Daniel Marovitz joins Skift Global Forum East to dive deeper into the FinTech forces redefining travel. Expect a forward look at how smarter payments, AI-led personalization, and seamless tech ecosystems are building the foundation for travel’s next era of growth.

Be part of the conversation on how technology empowers better travel at Skift Global Forum East.