Kayak Co-Founders Launch Lola — Booking Holdings’ New AI Assistant: Exclusive

Photo Credit: Lola, the new AI startup from Steve Hafner and Paul English, via Booking Holdings, brings a new proposition to travel AI. Courtesy of Lola Lola is not yet another AI feature inside Booking.com. It is an AI assistant designed to be the OTA itself — built to carry a traveler from an open-ended idea to a booked trip in one chat. Lola, which launches Tuesday, is the brainchild of Kayak co-founders Steve Hafner and Paul English. It is wholly owned by Booking Holdings, with Hafner reporting to CEO Glenn Fogel. Fogel gave Hafner a “greenfield” mandate — a direction to build a new project from scratch — allowing Lola to start off with fresh code and branding. “At Kayak, we were trying to solve what's the best flight,” said Hafner. “At Lola, we're trying to solve for what should I do this weekend.” Hafner said the team has been building Lola for five months and now has about 20 employees split across New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The structure gives Lola an unusual combination: startup-style freedom with assets most startups cannot match — Booking'