Booking.com Customer Service Representative interview questions

3 interviews in 2 weeks, the first one with a recruiter, the second one with the manager, the last one with the team. Fairly basic questions about your experience, your motivation

First a phone call with a recruiter to go over experience, the job, and company culture/benefits. Next was a video call interview with a would-be manager. Behavioral questions and industry experience questions mainly. Felt like I connected with them and did well. However I was told the next day that they decided to hire internally. Why post the job externally just to hire someone who’s internal? Beats me. Seems super fishy as I had industry experience under one of their subsidiary companies, and job specific experience.