We recently published our study of the top hotel brands by traffic. The data wasn’t a shock, but still.
The hotel dataset already tells a clear story. Marriott International leads with 76.4M organic visits, followed by Hilton at 58.9M, and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts at 30.2M. Add Accor, IHG, and Hyatt, and six companies dominate the hotel landscape.
But the more interesting question is this: what happens if you drop OTAs into that same ranking and treat them like hotel brands? We compared the Hotel Brands against the OTAs of the world data and it shows a different figure.
Start with Booking.com. At 274.3M organic visits, it would not just be number one. It would be in a different category entirely. Booking.com would be 3.6 times larger than Marriott, and larger than the top six hotel groups combined. In a “hotel chain ranking”, it would sit alone at the top.
Then comes Agoda. At 74.6M, it would slot in right next to Marriott, essentially tied for the number one position. That alone reframes the perception of scale. A single OTA brand is competing head-to-head with the largest hotel group in the world in terms of search visibility.
Expedia, at 41.8M, would comfortably rank around fourth place, just behind Wyndham and ahead of Accor, IHG, and Hyatt.
And then there is Airbnb.
At 20.3M organic visits, Airbnb would land somewhere in the upper mid-tier of global hotel groups, below Hyatt and IHG, and significantly behind the leaders. It is large, but not dominant. Compared to Marriott, Airbnb is roughly 3.7 times smaller in organic traffic.
Download the chart and the dataset and make your own comparisons.
Here are some fun facts about hotels and OTA traffic
Booking.com alone captures roughly 32% of total OTA organic traffic, making it the single largest traffic engine across both hotels and OTAs.
Marriott International captures about 26% of total hotel organic traffic.
Booking.com generates 3.6x more traffic than Marriott, the largest hotel group globally.
Booking.com is larger than Marriott, Hilton, Wyndham, Accor, IHG, and Hyatt combined.
Expedia would rank #4 globally as a hotel chain, ahead of Accor, IHG, and Hyatt.
The top three hotel groups, Marriott, Hilton, and Wyndham, together generate 165.5M visits, still 40% smaller than Booking.com alone.
Airbnb at 20.3M visits, is 3.7x smaller than Marriott and sits closer to mid-tier hotel groups.
The entire hotel dataset totals ~293M visits, while the OTA dataset reaches ~844M, meaning OTAs collectively generate nearly 3x more organic traffic than hotel brands.
