Booking Holdings Inc. (BKNG)

Item 2.  Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

The following discussion should be read in conjunction with our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, including Part I, Item 1A "Risk Factors," as well as our Unaudited Consolidated Financial Statements and accompanying notes and the Sections entitled "Risk Factors" and "Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" in this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. We use the Investor Relations page of our website (ir.bookingholdings.com) to disclose material information for purposes of the SEC's Regulation Fair Disclosure. We encourage our investors to monitor this website in addition to our other public announcements and SEC filings as information posted on that page could be deemed to be material information. The information on our websites is not a part of this Quarterly Report and is not incorporated herein by reference.

We evaluate certain operating and financial measures on both an as-reported and constant currency basis. We calculate constant currency based on the predominant transactional currency in each country, converting our current-year period results in currencies other than U.S. Dollars using the corresponding prior-year period monthly average exchange rates.

Overview

Our mission is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. We aim to provide consumers with a best-in-class experience with tailored planning, payment, language, and other options, seamlessly connecting them with our travel service provider partners. We offer these services through five primary consumer-facing brands: Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, and OpenTable.

We derive substantially all of our revenues from enabling consumers to make travel service reservations. We also earn revenues from payment facilitation, advertising, restaurant reservation and management services, travel-related insurance offerings, and other services.

Trends

Our global room nights in 2025 increased 8% year-over-year driven primarily by healthy travel demand in Europe and Asia. We saw the booking window expand in 2025 compared to 2024, which benefited year-over-year room night growth.

Global room nights increased 5% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2026, compared to 6% in the first quarter of 2026. The sequential slowdown primarily reflected the continued impact of the conflict in the Middle East throughout the second quarter, whereas the first quarter was partially affected, primarily in March, following the onset of the conflict.

During the second quarter, the conflict in the Middle East continued to affect travel demand trends. While direct impacts on travel within the region largely normalized during June, there were continued indirect impacts, including elevated flight ticket prices, reduced flight capacity on certain international routes, and decreased long-haul international travel demand. At the same time, domestic travel, meaning travel within a traveler's own country, and short-haul regional travel remained relatively healthy, including within Europe, partially offsetting decreased long-haul international travel.

While the geopolitical and macroeconomic environment can impact global travel demand, we believe our diversified global portfolio of leading travel brands, flexible platforms, and strong financial position helps us to navigate a range of scenarios. We continue to take a long-term view, staying focused on delivering value to our travelers and partners, maintaining disciplined cost management, and making strategic investments as appropriate.

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Quarterly Room Nights and Change versus the prior year

Change vs. PY (1)

(1)    Room night growth rates are rounded for presentation purposes.

The cancellation rate in the second quarter of 2026 was lower than the second quarter of 2025. While the conflict in the Middle East continued to affect travel demand during the second quarter, cancellation rates normalized following the elevated levels in March 2026 immediately after the onset of the conflict. Because we recognize revenues from bookings when the traveler checks in, our reported revenues are not at risk of being reversed due to cancellations. Increases in cancellation rates can negatively impact our marketing efficiency as a result of incurring performance marketing expenses at the time a booking is made even though that booking could be canceled in the future.

In the second quarter of 2026, our global average daily rates ("ADRs") on a constant currency basis were approximately 2% higher than the prior year primarily driven by higher ADRs in Europe and the U.S. Our global ADRs were not materially impacted by changes in regional mix in the second quarter of 2026.

We focus on relentless innovation to grow our business by providing a best-in-class user experience with intuitive, easy-to-use platforms that aim to exceed the expectations of consumers. We are executing against our long-term strategy to create an ideal AI-powered traveler experience, offering our customers relevant options and suggestions at the times and in the language they want them, making trips booked with us seamless, easy, and valuable. We refer to this as the "Connected Trip." The goal of our Connected Trip vision is to offer a differentiated and personalized travel planning, booking, payment, and in-trip experience for each trip, enhanced by a robust loyalty program that provides value to travelers and partners across all trips. While we believe these efforts will help improve traveler loyalty, frequency, and mix of direct bookings over time, which will benefit revenue growth and marketing efficiency in the future, the expansion of our Connected Trip vision involves a higher proportion of non-accommodation services which have lower margins than our accommodation services. To the extent these non-accommodation services increase as a percentage of our total business, our overall operating margins may be negatively affected.

Our mobile apps are an important platform for delivering the Connected Trip experience, allowing us to engage directly with travelers throughout their journey. The mix of our room nights booked on our mobile apps over the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2026, was a high-fifties percentage, up from a mid-fifties percentage over the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2025. The significant majority of room nights booked on our mobile apps are direct, and we continue to see favorable repeat direct booking behavior from consumers in our mobile apps, which allow us more opportunities to engage directly with them. The revenues earned on a transaction on a mobile app may be less than a typical desktop transaction as we see different consumer purchasing patterns across devices. For example, accommodation reservations made on a mobile app typically are for shorter lengths of stay and have lower accommodation ADRs.

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We continue to expand our merchant service offerings as part of a broader strategy to provide more payment options to travelers and travel service providers, increase the variety of our accommodations, and enable our long-term Connected Trip strategy. These merchant services allow us to facilitate payments from travelers and offer secure, flexible transaction terms, such as varied payment forms, currencies, and timing. The mix of our total gross bookings generated on a merchant basis across the Company was 73% in the second quarter of 2026, an increase from 69% in the second quarter of 2025 due to the ongoing shift from agency to merchant bookings at Booking.com. We believe that expanding these types of service offerings will benefit consumers and travel service providers, as well as our gross bookings, room night, and earnings growth rates. However, this results in additional expenses for personnel, payment processing, chargebacks (including those related to fraud), and other expenses related to these transactions, which are recorded in "Personnel" expenses and "Sales and other expenses" in our Unaudited Consolidated Statements of Operations, as well as associated incremental revenues (e.g., payment card rebates), which are recorded in "Merchant revenues." To the extent more of our business is generated on a merchant basis, we incur a greater level of these merchant-related expenses, which negatively impacts our operating margins despite increases in associated incremental revenues. Over the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2026, the incremental revenues from facilitating payments were greater than the associated incremental variable expenses.

We have established widely-used and recognized brands through marketing and promotional campaigns. Our total performance and brand marketing expenses, which are substantially variable in nature, were $2.4 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 11% versus the second quarter of 2025, primarily reflecting year-over-year growth in travel demand, continued investment in performance marketing channels where returns remained attractive, and the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates. Our performance marketing expenses, which represent a substantial majority of our marketing expenses, are primarily related to the use of online search engines (primarily Google), affiliate marketing (i.e., business-to-business or "B2B"), meta search, and social media channels to generate bookings through our platforms. Our brand marketing expenses are primarily related to costs associated with producing and airing digital branding and television advertising, as well as sponsorships and other brand-building activities.

Marketing efficiency, expressed as marketing expenses as a percentage of gross bookings, and performance marketing returns on investment ("ROIs") are impacted by a number of factors that are in some cases outside of our control. Such factors include ADRs, costs per click, cancellation rates, foreign currency exchange rates, search engine bidding algorithms, channel mix, our ability to convert paid traffic to booking customers, and the timing and effectiveness of our brand marketing and social media marketing campaigns. When evaluating performance marketing spend, we typically consider several factors for each channel, such as the customer experience on the advertising platform, the incremental bookings we receive, and anticipated repeat rates.

Marketing efficiency is also impacted by the extent to which consumers book directly with us. The mix of total room nights booked by consumers coming directly to our platforms was a mid-fifties percentage over the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2026 and June 30, 2025, respectively. In both periods, the mix was higher if we exclude the room nights booked through the B2B channel. This was achieved despite declines in traffic through organic or unpaid search results, which is what we call Search Engine Optimization ("SEO"). Room nights booked through the SEO channel remain a small component of our overall room nights. While we seek to adapt to evolving search engine dynamics, we expect SEO traffic to decline in the short to medium term, which may lead to increased spend in paid marketing channels.

Booking.com had approximately 4.7 million total properties on its website at June 30, 2026, representing an increase from approximately 4.3 million total properties at June 30, 2025. At June 30, 2026, Booking.com's website had over 4.1 million alternative accommodation properties (including homes, apartments, and other unique places to stay) and over 500,000 hotels, motels, and resorts.

The mix of Booking.com's room nights booked for alternative accommodation properties in the second quarter of 2026 was approximately 37%, in line with the second quarter of 2025, reflecting, in part, lower alternative accommodation room night growth in the Middle East. Over the past several years, alternative accommodations were increasing as a percentage of Booking.com'

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Item 7. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations

The following discussion should be read in conjunction with Part I, Item 1A "Risk Factors" and our Consolidated Financial Statements and accompanying notes.

We evaluate certain operating and financial measures on both an as-reported and constant currency basis. We calculate constant currency based on the predominant transactional currency in each country, converting our current year results in currencies other than U.S. Dollars using the corresponding prior year monthly average exchange rates.

Overview

Our mission is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. We aim to provide consumers with a best-in-class experience with tailored planning, payment, language, and other options, seamlessly connecting them with our travel service provider partners. We offer these services through five primary consumer-facing brands: Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, and OpenTable. See Notes 1 and 17 to our Consolidated Financial Statements for segment reporting and geographic information.

We derive substantially all of our revenues from enabling consumers to make travel service reservations. We also earn revenues from payment facilitation, advertising, restaurant reservation and management services, travel-related insurance offerings, and other services.

Trends

Our global room nights in 2025 increased 8% year-over-year driven primarily by healthy travel demand in Europe and Asia. We saw the booking window expand in 2025 compared to 2024, which benefited year-over-year room night growth.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, global room nights increased 9% year-over-year. We saw healthy travel demand across all our major regions in the fourth quarter of 2025.

While the geopolitical and macroeconomic environment can impact global travel demand, we believe our diversified global portfolio of leading travel brands, flexible platforms, and strong financial position helps us to navigate a range of scenarios. We continue to take a long-term view, staying focused on delivering value to our travelers and partners, maintaining disciplined cost management, and making strategic investments as appropriate.

Quarterly Room Nights and Change versus the prior year (1)

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Full Year Room Nights and Change versus the prior year (1)

(1)    Room night growth rates are rounded for presentation purposes.

The cancellation rate in 2025 was lower than the prior year. Because we recognize revenues from bookings when the traveler checks in, our reported revenues are not at risk of being reversed due to cancellations. Increases in cancellation rates can negatively impact our marketing efficiency as a result of incurring performance marketing expenses at the time a booking is made even though that booking could be canceled in the future.

In 2025, our global average daily rates ("ADRs") on a constant currency basis were about in line with the prior year. Our global ADRs were slightly negatively impacted by a higher mix of room nights in Asia, which is a lower ADR region. Excluding the changes in regional mix, our global ADRs on a constant currency basis were up approximately 1% year-over-year, driven primarily by higher ADRs in Europe.

We focus on relentless innovation to grow our business by providing a best-in-class user experience with intuitive, easy-to-use platforms that aim to exceed the expectations of consumers. We are executing against our long-term strategy to create an ideal AI-powered traveler experience, offering our customers relevant options and suggestions at the times and in the language they want them, making trips booked with us seamless, easy, and valuable. We refer to this as the "Connected Trip." The goal of our Connected Trip vision is to offer a differentiated and personalized travel planning, booking, payment, and in-trip experience for each trip, enhanced by a robust loyalty program that provides value to travelers and partners across all trips. We believe these efforts will help improve traveler loyalty, frequency, and mix of direct bookings over time. We believe these improvements will benefit revenue growth and marketing efficiency in the future, however, to the extent our non-accommodation services have lower margins and increase as a percentage of our total business, our operating margins may be negatively affected.

Our mobile apps are an important platform for experiencing the Connected Trip since the app travels with the traveler. The mix of our room nights booked on our mobile apps in 2025 was a mid-fifties percentage, up from a low-fifties percentage in 2024. The significant majority of room nights booked on our mobile apps are direct, and we continue to see favorable repeat direct booking behavior from consumers in our mobile apps, which allow us more opportunities to engage directly with them. The revenues earned on a transaction on a mobile app may be less than a typical desktop transaction as we see different consumer purchasing patterns across devices. For example, accommodation reservations made on a mobile app typically are for shorter lengths of stay and have lower accommodation ADRs.

We continue to expand our merchant service offerings as part of a broader strategy to provide more payment options to travelers and travel service providers, increase the variety of our accommodations, and enable our long-term Connected Trip strategy. These merchant services allow us to facilitate payments from travelers and offer secure, flexible transaction terms, such as varied payment forms, currencies, and timing. The mix of our total gross bookings generated on a merchant basis across the company was 70% in 2025, an increase from 63% in 2024 due to the ongoing shift from agency to merchant bookings at Booking.com. We believe that expanding these types of service offerings will benefit consumers and travel service providers, as well as our gross bookings, room night, and earnings growth rates. However, this results in additional expenses for personnel, payment processing, chargebacks (including those related to fraud), and other expenses related to these transactions, which are recorded in "Personnel" expenses and "Sales and other expenses" in our Consolidated Statements of Operations, as well as associated incremental revenues (e.g., payment card rebates), which are recorded in "Merchant revenues." To the extent more of our business is generated on a merchant basis, we incur a greater level of these merchant-related expenses, which negatively impacts our operating margins despite increases in associated incremental revenues. In 2025, the incremental revenues from facilitating payments were greater than the associated incremental variable expenses.

We have established widely-used and recognized brands through marketing and promotional campaigns. Our total performance and brand marketing expenses, which are substantially variable in nature, were $8.2 billion in 2025, up 12.5% versus 2024 as a result of the year-over-year growth in travel demand and due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates. Our performance marketing expenses, which represent a substantial majority of our marketing expenses, are primarily related to the use of online search engines (primarily Google), affiliate marketing, meta-search, and social media channels to generate bookings through our platforms. Our brand marketing expenses are primarily related to costs associated with producing and airing digital branding and television advertising.

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Marketing efficiency, expressed as marketing expenses as a percentage of gross bookings, and performance marketing returns on investment ("ROIs") are impacted by a number of factors that are in some cases outside of our control. Such factors include ADRs, costs per click, cancellation rates, foreign currency exchange rates, search engine bidding algorithms, channel mix, our ability to convert paid traffic to booking customers, and the timing and effectiveness of our brand marketing and social media marketing campaigns. In 2025, our average ROI was down slightly year-over-year driven by changes in paid traffic mix and increased social media spend. When evaluating our performance marketing spend, we typically consider several factors for each channel, such as the customer experience on the advertising platform, the incremental bookings we receive, and anticipated repeat rates. Marketing efficiency is also impacted by the extent to which consumers book directly with us. The mix of our total room nights booked by consumers coming directly to our platforms was a mid-fifties percentage in 2025, and was higher if we exclude the room nights booked through affiliate programs (i.e., business-to-business). The mix of total room nights booked by consumers coming directly to our platforms increased year-over-year, which benefited our marketing efficiency for 2025. See Part I, Item 1A, Risk Factors - "We face risks relating to our marketing efforts" and "We are dependent on travel service providers, restaurants, search platforms, and other third parties."

Booking.com had approximately 4.4 million total properties on its website at December 31, 2025, representing an increase from approximately 4.0 million total properties at December 31, 2024. At December 31, 2025, the total properties on Booking.com's website consisted of approximately 3.9 million alternative accommodation properties (including homes, apartments, and other unique places to stay) and approximately 500,000 hotels, motels, and resorts.

The mix of Booking.com's room nights booked for alternative accommodation properties in 2025 was approximately 36%, up versus approximately 35% in 2024. We have observed a longer-term trend of an increasing mix of room nights booked for alternative accommodation properties as consumer demand for these types of properties has grown, and as we have increased the number and variety of these properties on Booking.com. We may experience lower profit margins due to additional costs from offering alternative accommodations, such as increased customer service or certain partner related costs. As our alternative accommodation business grows, these different characteristics may negatively impact our profit margins.

Although we believe that providing an extensive collection of properties, excellent customer service, and an intuitive, easy-to-use platform are important factors influencing a consumer's decision to make a reservation, for many consumers the price of the travel service is the primary factor determining whether to book. Discounting and couponing (i.e., merchandising) occurs across the major regions in which we operate, particularly in Asia. In some cases, our competitors are willing to make little or no profit on a transaction or offer travel services at a loss in order to gain market share. As a result, it is important to offer travel services at a competitive price, whether through discounts, coupons, closed-user group rates or loyalty programs, increased flexibility in cancellation policies, or otherwise. Some of these initiatives, such as discounts, may result in lower ADRs and lower revenues as a percentage of gross bookings as they can reduce the daily room rate and are recognized as contra-revenue.

Over the long term, we intend to continue to invest in marketing and promotion, technology, and personnel, as well as exploring strategic alternatives such as acquisitions, within parameters consistent with efforts to improve long-term operating results. To create room for these investments, we intend to continue to look for ways to optimize our expenses.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, we began the implementation of organizational changes to improve operating expense efficiency, increase organizational agility, free up resources that can be reinvested into further improving our offering to travelers and partners, and better position our business for the long term (th

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