Booking holdings tips

The period after the Great Financial Crisis in 2008-2009 until 2019 was a golden decade for online travel agencies. Booking and Expedia benefitted from the shift to online bookings, a consolidation of the online distribution landscape, and share gains from hotels. They become the most powerful duopoly in online travel. 

Booking Holdings has been engaged in building a “connected trip” — where travelers might book a flight accommodation and attraction on Booking.com — over the past few years.

Booking.com initiated a program in 2021 to highlight properties that were standouts in their sustainability practices – on Monday, it began removing its badges from listings in response to regulators in the Netherlands.

Kayak this week released a tool that it says can read flight fare information from a screenshot and then search for a better price. 

Reverse stock splits are almost never a good sign and companies have a tough time recovering. They do it when their shares are in the basement and they’re at risk of a delisting.

Only on Skift: What’s a key part of Booking Holdings‘ strategy to attract hotel and short-term rental guests? The company, which owns brands including Booking.com, Kayak and Priceline, spent around $6 billion on marketing in 2022 — and that was about 35% of its total revenue. A BTIG investor report published last week stated that Booking gets around 50% of its traffic direct; around 20 percent from free search engine listings; roughly 15% from social media, email, display ads and referrals, and 15% from paid search engine marketing — “and it spends billions annually to get that last piece.”

Hungary’s short-term rental hosts who offer their properties on Amsterdam-based Booking.com haven’t been paid for several months, leaving some having to decide whether they’ll need to shutter their businesses, according to published reports.

Scammers have been targeting Booking.com customers for years, and in the latest attempt to find victims, they have reportedly been placing ads on the dark web to obtain the passwords of Booking’s hotel partners.

Spain’s anti-trust agency CNMC on Wednesday cleared Amazon, Booking Holdings and Tripadvisor of participating in or facilitating fake reviews on their websites.

Airbnb, Booking.com, and Expedia Group have agreed to share data with the UK’s Office for National Statistics by spring 2024.

Booking Holdings, whose $1.8 billion deal to acquire Sweden’s eTraveli Group was blocked by European Commission earlier this year, paid out $90 million in termination fee this October, according to a nugget in its latest quarterly statement.

Booking Holdings reported a record number of room nights booked in the third quarter and strong gains in its flights business. It expects growth to continue but noted a caveat: Business has slowed down in the Middle East because of the Israel-Hamas war and the company’s current forecast assumes no further expansion of the conflict.

Expedia increased spending 10 times over five years to advertise vacation home rentals on Google, but the online travel agency saw no increase in traffic because the search giant has been prioritizing its own flight and hotel products. 

Kayak and OpenTable, two Booking Holdings brands, laid off 80 employees, Skift has learned.

Booking Holdings has viewed its planned $1.7 billion acquisition of Swedish-based company eTraveli Group as a coup in its attempts to boost its flight business. However, the European Commission has blocked the deal, arguing that the deal would increase Booking.com’s hotel market share in Europe.

Booking Holdings’ proposed 1.63 billion euro ($1.7 billion) purchase of Swedish peer ETraveli Group was blocked by EU antitrust authorities on Monday after the company failed to allay concerns about its dominance in online hotel reservations.

Kayak, the travel price-comparison service, on Tuesday debuted a corporate travel service for large companies.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Thursday, November 3. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Big Tech companies are laying off tens of thousands of people. 

Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, November 9. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Travel platform Agoda has been pushing ahead with a series of new fintech partnerships, with its eye on Asia’s corporate travel recovery.