Booking.com Statistics [2024]: Company & Growth Data Analysis

With over 500 million monthly website visits, Booking.com is a travel powerhouse. Industry experts expect Booking.com will keep growing its dominance in the travel field.

Booking.com started in Amsterdam in 1996 as a website for finding and reserving hotels in Europe. Today, it is the largest travel website in the world and has outpaced sites like Airbnb, TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, and Expedia (its main competitor).

I did in-depth and wide-ranging research, digging into Booking.com’s annual company reports, third-party website traffic metrics, and global tourism data. I compiled information from these diverse sources to find key insights into the website’s growth and success. This report details the following:

• Comparison of Booking.com with top competitors
• Breakdown of Booking.com listings and users by country
• Year-by-year tracking of Booking.com performance
• Reporting on Booking.com’s sustainability efforts

• Booking.com has over 28 million listings for places to stay, including 6.6 million homes, apartments, and other unique, non-hotel stays.
• Booking.com has hotel and vacation rental listings in 228 countries.
• Booking.com sees over 500% more website traffic than its closest competitor, Airbnb.
• Italy has the most Booking.com listings of any country: over 270,000.
• In 2020, Booking.com’s revenue dropped by 63% from the previous year. By 2022, revenue bounced back up to 126% of pre-pandemic numbers.
• 60% of nights reserved through Booking.com in the US come from the mobile app.
• More than 400,000 travel providers have been awarded Booking Holding’s Travel Sustainable Badge.
• Booking Holdings has reduced its total direct and indirect carbon emissions by 45% since 2019.

Over the past two decades, Booking.com has grown from a small Dutch internet startup to the largest travel company in the world. The extent of this growth is even more impressive when comparing Booking.com to competing websites.

The statistics in this section illustrate the differences between Booking.com and its competition.

Competitor Online Traffic Comparison

Booking.com is the most-visited travel site on the internet. The table below highlights this by showing the monthly search volume for the top five hotels and accommodations sites (as measured by SimilarWeb).

Booking.com’s market domination becomes clear when you see that the site gets over 500% more total visits than the next competitor, Airbnb.com.

Also notice that the 4th-ranked competitor, Agoda.com, is another brand owned by Booking Holdings. The fact that 2 of the top 5 hotel websites are owned by Booking Holdings is impressive.

Competitor Financial Comparison

Looking at the financial performance of Booking Holdings versus its competitors is also striking.

While stock price is not a perfect metric for company success, it is a useful indicator, especially for seeing how well companies recover from downturns like the COVID-19 pandemic.

The table below shows pre-COVID stock price highs and the stock prices as of November 2023 of Booking Holdings and top competing companies.

*Airbnb didn’t go public until Dec. 2020, so the reported “pre-COVID High” is just the starting price.

From its pre-COVID high, Booking Holding’s stock price has increased 33%, while most competitors in the industry have seen major declines.

Expedia Group, Booking Holding’s top competitor, still shows stock price levels over 30% below pre-COVID levels.

The key takeaway here is that while Booking’s competitors (and the tourism industry at large) are still working to recover from the pandemic, Booking Holdings has fully recovered and even seen accelerated growth.

I’ll dive deeper into this subject in the section on Booking.com Performance Over Time.

Booking.com is headquartered in Amsterdam but has spread around the world. There are now listings for hotels and vacation rentals in 228 countries, from Switzerland to Sri Lanka.

Here are the key Booking.com statistics by country.

Number of Booking.com Listings by Country

Booking.com started as a specialist in online hotel reservations for Europe. While it has spread around the globe, the bulk of its business is still focused on Europe.

Booking.com has over 28 million active hotels and other vacation rental listings in 228 countries around the world. Here is a breakdown of the top 25 countries ranked by number of Booking.com listings:

Italy has the most Booking.com listings of any country, with 270,059 hotels, vacation rentals, and other accommodations. That’s over 40% more than the United States in second place.

Europe has the most Booking.com listings of any continent/region. 10 of the top 20 countries for the number of listings are in Europe. This isn’t surprising, since Booking.com is headquartered in Amsterdam. Booking.com started in Europe and has maintained very strong leadership in the European travel market.

This doesn’t quite give the full picture though, as Booking.com is only one brand of Booking Holdings. The company has additional influence outside Europe with websites like Priceline, which is based in the US, and Agoda, which focuses on Asia.

Booking.com Users by Country

Further insights appear when looking at Booking.com users by country rather than just listings by country. Here are the top five countries for Booking.com website traffic (according to SimilarWeb).

Since its start in 1996 as a dot com startup in Amsterdam, Booking.com’s growth has been consistent and impressive. In 2005 Booking.com became part of a larger online travel business when the Priceline Group acquired it in 2005.

In 2018 the Priceline Group changed its name to Booking Holdings to reflect the importance of the company’s largest brand.

The Booking Holdings Company Factsheet reports the number of room nights booked annually from 2008 to last year.

“Room nights” refers to the total number of nights booked through Booking.com across all separate accommodations. The yearly room nights booked through Booking.com was growing steadily until 2020 when the pandemic put a halt to travel in many regions.

The graph below shows the number of nights booked each year:

Measured in terms of total room nights, between 2008 and 2019 (just before the pandemic), Booking.com’s average growth rate was 32% per year. That amounts to 2000% growth over 11 years.

Booking’s Pre-COVID growth was most rapid earlier on between 2008 and 2011, when it averaged around 50% annual increase in room nights sold. In 2018 and 2019, progress started to level out.

Booking’s rapid growth outpaced competitors and the travel industry at large.

The past several years have been turbulent for the travel industry. From pandemic-era shutdowns and restrictions to the post-pandemic travel boom and now global conflict and wavering economies, there has been a lot of change for sites like Booking.com.

As the leading travel company in terms of market share, there was significant pressure for Booking Holdings to maintain market dominance during and after the pandemic shakedown.

Here are the key statistics on Booking.com’s losses from the pandemic, and its subsequent recovery.

Booking.com Pandemic Losses

Like the rest of the travel industry, Booking.com saw huge drops in reservations and revenue in 2020.

From 2019 to 2020, the number of room nights reserved through Booking.com dropped by 68% due to the pandemic.

The effect of the pandemic is also striking when looking at the revenue of Booking.com’s gross travel bookings, which dropped 63% from 2019 to 2020.

Impressively, even with the dramatic drop in gross travel bookings in 2020, Booking Holdings still managed to do better (barely) than break even with a net profit of $59 million. That was a 99% decrease from the previous year’s net profit of $4.8 billion.

Still, that is far better performance than most companies and other websites in the tourism industry fared during the pandemic. For example, based on data from Macro Trends, Booking Holding’s top competitor, Expedia, operated at a net loss of $2.7 billion in 2020.

Booking.com Pandemic Recovery

Global tourism hasn’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels based on 2022 data from the UN World Tourism Organization. In 2022, 900 million people traveled internationally. That’s a major improvement from 2020 and 2021, but it is still 37% lower than pre-pandemic levels.

Most experts don’t expect global tourism to recover to 2019 levels until the end of 2024.

On the other hand, Booking.com and its parent company Booking Holdings experienced a much quicker rebound from the pandemic.

By 2022, Booking.com’s total number of room nights sold was 6% above 2019 levels, and revenue from gross travel bookings was up 25%.

Explaining Booking.com’s Accelerated Recovery

There’s no one obvious explanation for why Booking.com has outperformed other online travel agents in recovering from the pandemic. Rather, it is a combination of several complex factors.

One contributing factor is that, while Expedia focuses heavily on North America, Booking.com has the largest travel market share in Europe by far.

That makes a difference because the hotel industry is vastly different between Europe and North America.

In North America, most hotels are operated by major chains (Wyndham, Marriott, etc.). These larger chain companies have much more bargaining power when negotiating with online travel agencies, meaning lower margins for those agencies.

On the other hand, according to HospitalityNet, in Europe, only 20-25% of hotels are part of a large chain brand. Independent hotels have less bargaining power, so Booking.com can negotiate higher booking fees. UN World Tourism Organization research also shows that Europe has seen the greatest recovery in travel and tourism.

This only partially explains Booking.com’s impressive recovery though, especially in the current global financial situation.

Booking.com is owned by the parent company Booking Holdings Inc. which was known as the Priceline Group until February 2018.

Booking Holdings’ brands include:

• Booking.com
• Priceline
• Agoda
• Rentalcars.com
• KAYAK
• OpenTable

Together, they market everything from hotels to flights to restaurant reservations.

Here are the key Booking Holdings statistics as the company continues to evolve.

Booking Mobile App and US Market Growth

In recent years, Booking Holdings has put significant emphasis and effort into growth in the US market, which has typically been the stronghold of its top competitor, Expedia. Booking Holdings sees the Booking App as a key to success in the US as Americans are spending more and more time on mobile devices.

Usage data shows that 40% of total bookings and over 60% of room nights in America were reserved on the mobile app, according to Travel Weekly.

Rental Cars, Flights, and More

Booking.com started as a website solely for booking hotels, but the business has now expanded to include rental cars, airline tickets, short-term rentals, and full vacation packages. By adding more services, Booking.com has become a full-service online travel agency, leading to greater transaction volume and brand growth.

Below is the breakdown of travel bookings for room nights, rental car days, and flights in 2021 and 2022 according to the Booking Holdings 2022 Annual Report:

Clearly, travel lodgings and hotels are still the largest business segment for Booking. However, the company has gained a strong foothold in rental cars and airline tickets. Experts expect this trend to continue.

Booking.com is already the industry leader for travel lodgings, and as its business expands further into rental cars, flights, and more, the online travel giant will only solidify its position as the top travel site in the world.

As buzzwords like “climate change” and “sustainability” are becoming more salient in the global conversation, more companies are beginning to implement policies geared toward sustainability.

Booking Holdings has put more emphasis on investing in sustainability in its operations and supply chain. The Booking Holdings 2022 Sustainability Report provides details on the progress made by the company.

Sustainable Travel

Booking Holdings commissioned a third-party study in 2021 into travelers’ attitudes toward sustainability. It turns out that for travelers around the globe, reducing waste, consumption, and emissions is more important than ever.

Here are some of the study’s key findings:

• 83% of travelers believe sustainable travel is vital for the future.
• 84% of people want to reduce waste while traveling.
• 83% are willing to take specific actions to reduce energy consumption (like turning down heating or A/C in their hotel room).
• 79% plan to use more eco-friendly modes of transportation like walking, cycling, or public transit rather than car rentals or taxis.
• 76% of travelers want to ensure the economic impact of travel is spread equally across socio-economic classes.
• 53% of people are frustrated when accommodations inhibit sustainable practices (e.g., by not providing recycling services).

Travel Sustainable Program

In 2021 Booking Holdings launched its Travel Sustainable Program with the goal of empowering customers to make sustainable choices and incentivizing private accommodation operators to implement sustainable practices.

This program lets room providers earn a Travel Sustainable Badge, which is visible to Booking.com users. The metrics for this badge were developed with sustainability consulting firm ERM, and give providers specific ways to improve sustainability in five key areas: waste, energy, and greenhouse gasses, water, supporting local communities, and protecting nature.

So far, more than 400,000 travel providers have been awarded Booking Holding’s Travel Sustainable Badge. That’s only a small percentage of the 28 million Booking.com partners, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Booking.com aims to have more than 50% of total visits through more sustainable accommodations by 2027.

Booking.com Energy Consumption and Emissions

Every year, airline tickets, hotels, and other travel businesses generate massive quantities of greenhouse gasses. It’s no secret that travel is an energy-hungry, high-emissions industry.

Booking Holdings has taken steps toward reducing its direct and indirect energy consumption and carbon emissions. Since 2019, Booking Holdings has actively measured three emissions categories:

• Direct emissions from owned or controlled assets
• Indirect emissions from purchased energy
• Emissions generated from the company’s supply chain

The table below reports the emissions from these three categories:

Since 2019, Booking Holdings has reduced its own direct and indirect carbon emissions by 80%. That in itself is a worthy accomplishment, but 97% of the company’s total emissions are generated elsewhere in the supply chain.

Total emissions have been reduced by 45%, and Booking Holdings aims to cut total 2022 emissions by 50% before 2030.

This report is a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of Booking.com’s global reach, market share, financial data, growth over time, and sustainability policies. I gathered data both from Booking Holdings self-reporting and a wide range of third-party sources.

Financial and economic data came from the Booking Holdings Factsheet, the Booking Holdings 2022 Annual Report, and Macro Trends Annual/Quarterly Financial Metrics.

Website traffic and performance data came from SimilarWeb domain analysis.

Travel and lodging industry statistics came from the UN World Tourism Organization’s Impact Assessment of the COVID-19 Outbreak on International Tourism, Skift Research, and HospitalityNet.

Sustainability data came from the Booking Holdings 2022 Sustainability Report and Sustainable Travel Survey.

All sources not mentioned here are cited directly in the text.

There is a tremendous amount of information and data available across these sources, but it is disjointed and often difficult to interpret. I compiled raw data and individual findings from these sources into a single cohesive resource.

I used this wide range of information to generate the tables, graphs, and statistics in this report.