Building a scalable content engine for global growth

Episode notes

Fourteen years of scaling content at Booking.com revealed an uncomfortable truth: content and localization remain extraordinarily complex, and technology alone won't change that. In this episode of In Other Words, host Jason Hemingway is joined by Chris Dell. Chris built and ran Booking.com's 400-person global content operation across 45 locations and 46 languages. He now advises and coaches enterprises on sustainable growth. Chris talks openly about the operating philosophy that kept Booking.com's content engine running through explosive growth. He explains why the human layer is almost always the first thing to break under pressure, and how local teams with decision-making authority outperformed centralized control during peak demand. He makes the case that the earliest signs of operational friction are picked up through teams long before they appear in dashboards. He also challenges the assumption that AI has solved the content and localization problem. Most adoption, he argues, is performative. It's driven by investor expectations rather than genuine business needs.