Our curated selection of news and updates about Booking.com from trusted and reputable sources, including leading industry publications, official company announcements, and expert analysis. By bringing these perspectives together in one place, the page offers a clear and current view of how Booking.com is evolving, from platform strategy and product innovation to partnerships, regulation, and the broader market dynamics shaping hospitality. NASDAQ: BKNG
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#ai #traveltech #hospitality #revenuemanagement #ota #innovation #futureoftravel #proptech | Pawel Gawor | 13 comments
🚀 Booking.com’s stock is experiencing a rapid decline, possibly due to the rise of AI in travel. The traditional OTA model (Guest → Google → OTA → Hotel) faces disruption as AI enables direct bookings and personalized, frictionless travel plans. Booking.com retains key advantages, including global inventory and payment systems, making it a potential infrastructure provider for AI agents. Operators should focus on direct bookings and data ownership to adapt. AI will reshape the travel industry, impacting margins and transparency.
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Talent, Technology and Tenacity: The State of India’s Accommodation Industry in 2025
📈 Indian accommodation sector thrived in 2025, with 75% of hoteliers optimistic about growth. 70% reported higher occupancy rates, while AI adoption and upskilling are priorities. Hoteliers plan to hire 9.9 employees on average, focusing on housekeeping and food roles. Investment intentions dipped slightly, with 14% scaling back. Digital platforms are vital in mitigating seasonality, with 79% finding them effective. The survey by Statista and Booking.com involved 250 executives, conducted between July 7 and September 1, 2025.
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Cannes takes control of its off-season narrative
🏠 Cannes is deploying its “Cannes in Winter” strategy for the second year, from November 2025 to April 2026, targeting France, the UK, Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia. With 374 panels aiming for over five million impressions, the campaign spans Paris metro and airports like Geneva and Frankfurt. Partnering with Booking.com, it taps into 30 million monthly visitors. A special focus includes Valentine’s Day, with Staycation and VeryChic to bolster hotel performance in the off-season.
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Your Rate Is a Promise. What Is It Promising?
💸 This week, analyze your off-peak rates. Average review analysis takes 10 minutes. Check if language indicates mismatched expectations. Rates should align with guest expectations—low rates lead to fewer profits even with full bookings. Guests booking discounted stays expect a different experience. Adjust listing descriptions for accurate representation, guiding guests to choose off-peak stays intentionally. Consider platform discrepancies—evaluate listings on Airbnb, Booking.com. Address mismatches to improve guest satisfaction and financial outcomes.
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Hotel brands in a crowded market
🏨 The hotel industry houses over 450 brands with 17.5 million rooms under major groups and 14.3 million independent rooms globally. Marriott’s 2016 acquisition of Starwood created the largest hotel group with 30 brands. Global and regional groups account for 55% of accommodation capacity. Franchises focus on owner economics rather than guest preferences. The “big five” hotel groups dominate through scale and loyalty ecosystems. Sustainability and personalized loyalty programs drive modern consumer decisions.
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Hotels were late to the internet. Late to mobile. This time can be different.
🌐 ChatGPT hit 800 million weekly users in 17 months. Phocuswright research shows 15% of consumers use AI platforms like ChatGPT for travel shopping, doubling recently. Currently, 39% of travelers incorporate AI in planning. OTAs like Booking.com and Expedia partnered with ChatGPT early on, while most hotels lag. Lighthouse’s Connect AI links hotels directly with AI platforms, enabling control over data and booking. On February 25, Lighthouse hosts a session on enhancing hotel discoverability in ChatGPT.
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Traveller Review Awards 2026 Celebrate 1.81 Million Partners Worldwide and Reveal the Most Welcoming Destinations for the Year Ahead
📰 In 2026, Booking.com’s Traveller Review Awards honor 1.81 million partners in 221 countries, with Italy leading at 214,666 awards. Apartments remain dominant with 901,481 awards. Rental car awards surge by 49%, totaling 1,977. Bulgaria sees a 68% award increase. Top welcoming cities include Montepulciano, Italy, and Magong, Taiwan. Regions like Hidalgo, Mexico, and Navarra, Spain, also shine. These awards celebrate exceptional service and authenticity in travel experiences worldwide.
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Affiliate marketing for hotels: a distribution channel hiding in plain sight
📰 Hotels are leveraging affiliate marketing, a powerful yet often overlooked distribution channel. Unlike OTAs, affiliates like trusted travel publications and niche websites focus on recommendation and trust. Affiliate-driven bookings are direct, using official rates, and bring guests with higher intent who cancel less, stay longer, and are likely to return. Hotels only pay after stays. Big chains use affiliates efficiently, but independent hotels struggle due to fragmented systems. This shift offers hotels a balanced, higher-quality channel mix.
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AI Direct Channel Crisis | Michael J. Goldrich
💻 Expedia, Booking.com, and Accor have integrated AI booking apps within ChatGPT. Expedia’s chat experience is the smoothest, while Booking.com is moderate, and Accor has the most limited experience. Expedia and Booking.com redirect bookings back to their platforms, bypassing direct hotel relationships, whereas Accor maintains a direct channel. AI aids 90% of travelers, with 63% using it for most trips, signaling a shift in ownership of guest relationships as booking integration evolves.
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#chatgpt #newyork #revpar #ai #otas #hospitalityindustry #hoteltechnology #hotelinvestment #directbookings #hospitalitynews | 10 Minutes Hotel
🏨 In 2025, U.S. hotel investments surged 17.5% to $24 billion, with New York leading at $3.7 billion. Debt costs fell by 300 basis points since September 2024. In 2026, storytelling can counter a 40-60% web traffic drop due to AI, with 65% of users preferring AI personalization by late 2025. From April 20-22, 2026, Future Hospitality Summit Saudi Arabia will be at Mandarin Oriental, Riyadh, featuring over 1,100 leaders.
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1-800-HOTBLING
📱 Voice AI technology is revolutionizing restaurant reservations by enabling natural conversations and direct integration with management systems, without human intervention. Current systems can handle availability, modifications, and confirmations. Third-party platforms like Resy and OpenTable are costly, controlling online customer relationships. Voice AI offers personalized experiences and allows restaurants to prioritize regulars over scalpers. While expensive, early AI adopters will benefit. OpenClaw’s use case shows the growing trend for direct, personalized customer interactions.
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Your Guest Loved It. They Told No One.
📄 Roughly 77% of repeat guest revenue flows through online travel agencies, with only 8% of Airbnb users booking directly on subsequent visits. Reviews lacking specific details fail to generate referrals or repeat stays. A ten-minute review check is recommended: tally reviews mentioning clear moments versus generic praise. Aim for 6 or more specific reviews to foster referrals. Analyze guest feedback for recurring details to create memorable experiences, enhancing guest recommendations and direct bookings.
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Per Day Pricing or Occupancy Based Pricing? The impact of connectivity on your revenue strategy (Part 1)
🌐 In 2026, the hotel industry faces a choice between Per Day Pricing (PDP) and Occupancy Based Pricing (OBP). PDP, the traditional model, uses a base rate to auto-calculate prices for different occupancies, offering speed but limited flexibility. OBP provides independent pricing for each occupancy, allowing precision but requiring significant data management. A PDP setup might handle 10 base prices, while OBP deals with 160 prices, reflecting a balance between efficiency and control. €54,000 in potential high-season revenue hinges on…
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The Ascent of Longevity Science in Lodging and Hospitality: A New Age of Wellness Travel
🏖️ 2023 Booking.com survey shows 52% of American travelers prefer vacations extending lifespan. Sam Nazarian plans 15 luxury resorts and 10 medical centers by 2030 focusing on longevity. SHA Wellness in Spain, founded in 2008, expands to Mexico and UAE, offering integrative health services. Grand Resort Bad Ragaz in Switzerland launched Tamina Health Center, focusing on healthy living. The global wellness real estate market is projected to grow 18% annually through 2035.
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10 Ways Hotels can Increase Direct Bookings in 2026
🏨 In 2026, hotel website traffic is down 40-60% due to AI, but storytelling can boost visibility. By late 2025, 30% of travelers start searches on Booking.com. 65% prefer AI-facilitated personalization. 53% abandon slow mobile sites, highlighting the need for fast, seamless booking experiences. PPC ads yield a 2:1 ROI. In 2023, 65% of same-day bookings were on social media. Loyal customers seek immediate rewards, and trust in secure booking increases direct sales. By 2030, direct bookings are projected to…
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Travel Tech Essentialist #195: Essence
📈 Meta’s $2B Manus acquisition faces competition as Anthropic’s AI-built Claude Code launches in 10 days, boasting 95% cost savings and 92% quicker timelines. Ethan Mollick’s Penn experiment exemplifies AI’s efficiency, compressing months-long startup tasks into four days. OpenAI introduces a 4% Shopify fee starting January 26, increasing costs to over $7 per $100 order. Meanwhile, OpenAI anticipates $14B cash burn by 2026, with Anthropic targeting $20B-$26B ARR by the same year.
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Booking.com vs. Berlin Court: The parity story every hotelier needs to know
📈 In December 2025, the Berlin Regional Court ruled against Booking.com, holding it liable for damages to over 1,000 German accommodation providers due to rate parity practices that breach competition law. This decision could alter hotel and OTA relations by 2026. Lighthouse, a platform trusted by 70,000 hotels in 185 countries, provides insights on the ruling’s implications.
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Own the Right Guest: The New Luxury Resort Strategy
🏨 In luxury hospitality, targeting “Modern Affluent Travelers” is key. The strategy focuses on hyper-personalization, shifting from selling commodities to emotional outcomes like sanctuary and transformation. High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) value exclusive experiences over price, emphasizing direct relationships over intermediaries. Execution pillars include creating upstream demand, leveraging first-party data, and enhancing direct booking with exclusive perks. Long-term success lies in owning customer relationships, not renting them from online travel agencies (OTAs).
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Optimising Your Hotel’s Online Listings
📈 In 2024, Europe’s Digital Markets Act designated Booking.com as a “gatekeeper,” allowing hotels to offer better deals on their websites. OTAs enhance visibility through the “billboard effect” and influence AI-driven searches. Google Hotels integrates directly into search results, boosting recognition. Accurate listings, appealing visuals, and strategic pricing encourage direct bookings and trust. OTAs are evolving from necessary evils to essential discovery channels, supporting both initial exposure and long-term guest loyalty.
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The Great Debate: OTAs, AI, and the End of the 10 Blue Links Era | PA Dispatch No. 10
💻 Last week at Skift Megatrends, Seth Borko, Sarah Kopit, and I discussed AI’s impact on travel distribution. OTAs face challenges as AI alters discovery, potentially compressing take rates. U.S. travel agents once numbered 170,000; now, discovery may consolidate to ChatGPT/OpenAI and Google/Gemini. AI risks homogenizing choices, but personalization could counteract this. Independent hotels can now better target customers through AI. While AI simplifies building, it may centralize distribution, leaving OTAs vulnerable to repricing.
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2025 Guest Experience: How Hotels Are Winning Satisfaction in a Year of Record Demand
🏨 2026 Guest Experience Benchmark shows hotels thriving under pressure. In 2025, the global Guest Review Index reached 86.7%, a 0.5% increase from 2024. Review volume grew by 2.1%. Luxury hotels struggled, with a global GRI of 90.4%. The Middle East saw a 0.8-point GRI rise, while North America faced luxury stagnation. Google became the top review platform, surpassing TripAdvisor in mentions. Asia led globally, with exceptional GRI performance across star categories.
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#hospitalityleadership #traveldistribution #hotelstrategy #ota #revenuemanagement #boardperspective #hospitalityindustry #traveleconomics #digitaldistribution #hotelowners | Zhivko Ivanov
🏨 Booking.com generates more global visibility than the top five hotel chains combined, including Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Wyndham, and Accor. As of now, the largest OTAs—Booking Holdings, Expedia Group, Airbnb, Trip.com Group, and MakeMyTrip—dominate attention in the travel sector, significantly impacting search, pricing, and booking behaviors ahead of hotel websites. This spotlight on OTAs highlights strategic concerns for hotel CEOs about outsourcing control over the demand funnel.
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Why Hoteliers Trust AI-Powered Pricing Over Guesswork
💸 A 2024 Deloitte report reveals that 75% of European hotel executives plan to invest in data analytics, with 20% piloting AI technology. AI-powered revenue management systems (RMS) optimize hotel pricing by analyzing real-time data and predicting demand. A Milan hotel doubled its revenue and achieved a top 10 TripAdvisor ranking using such a system. AI RMS continuously adjusts prices based on market conditions and demand, ensuring optimal occupancy and revenue without manual intervention.
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Expedia’s different bet
🛠 Expedia’s infrastructure supports 70,000+ businesses, including Chase Travel, which reported $11.3 billion sales in 2024. In Q1 2025, Expedia’s B2B segment achieved a 22.8% EBITDA margin, outperforming its consumer segment at 11.1%. AI’s rise could challenge Booking.com’s visibility control while Expedia could become indispensable infrastructure. Expedia trades at 13-14x forward earnings vs. Booking’s 19-21x. AI’s impact on both is distinct: Booking risks losing travelers, while Expedia risks being invisible but essential.
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#hospitality #revenuemanagement #otastrategy #hoteloperations #distributionstrategy #hotelleadership #adr #occupancy #revpar | Suresh Kumar Sharma
📊 Booking.com boasts the highest booking volume but suffers from a high cancellation ratio. It’s ideal for base volume generation and new hotel visibility. Expedia excels in higher ADR with fewer cancellations, suitable for quality revenues and business segments. Agoda, strong in Asia, provides fast last-minute pickups but lower ADR, perfect for distressed inventory. Choose Booking.com for volume, Expedia for revenue quality, and Agoda for last-minute optimization. OTAs should complement your revenue strategy, not compete.
