Booking Holdings Makes Good on Long-Standing Goal to Take U.S. Market Share

25.08.2023 - 14:04 / skift.com / Dennis Schaal / Glenn Fogel / Long

Booking Holdings officials have spoken for years about their aim to take market share in rival Expedia Group’s stronghold, namely the U.S., and Booking appears to be delivering on that goal.

 “In the U.S., both our Priceline and Booking.com brands continue to execute well and contributed to U.S. room night growth of almost 30 percent and gross bookings growth of about 60 percent in 2022 versus 2019,” CEO Glenn Fogel said during Booking Holdings fourth quarter earnings call Thursday. “On our volume and consumer spend basis, we have grown our U.S. business to be meaningfully larger than it was prior to the pandemic.”

Without specifying the amount, Fogel said Booking gained market share in the U.S., and outpaced the broader accommodations market there. He said the U.S. gains came from brand marketing, adding flights to Booking.com, increasing adoption of the company’s payments platform, and working with “partners to ensure we are delivering incremental value to them.”

He said the company strives to access competitive rates from partners, such as hotels, and when it can’t Booking often discounts rates on its own to provide value to travelers.

Booking Holdings’ largest brand, Booking.com, is based in the Netherlands and has always seen Europe as its strongest market. It thought it could do better in the U.S., and is now starting to deliver on the effort.

Speaking about global competition, Fogel said Booking made inroads because competitors in 2021 “just didn’t seem to be out of the gate so fast in terms of their marketing, in terms of what they’re doing, whether it be brand or performance marketing in terms of trying to get the same demand that we are out getting there.”

In 2022, Booking went “full throttle” trying to gain customers through performance marketing in search engines, and increased its spending on brand marketing.

In the fourth quarter, Booking saw its room nights jump 39 percent year over year. Net income increased 100 percent to $1.2 billion on revenue of $4 billion, a 36 percent jump compared with the fourth quarter of 2021.

The company notched $3.1 billion in net income for full-year 2022, outpacing the prior year by 162 percent. Booking Holdings generated $17.1 billion in revenue, a 56 percent year over year increase.

In response to an analyst’s question, Fogel said there is a lot of hype about generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) at the moment.

“I think we’re still probably in the peak of inflated expectations, but there’s no doubt this technology has seems to be accelerating all the time,” he said. 

Fogel said he’s not scared about any competitive threats from generative AI, and is excited about it. He said the company has been working on AI for years, and will adapt to any