Last Updated -
March 24, 2026
Explore the business model, global strategy, and market performance including insights into its position in China.
Booking Holdings traces its roots to priceline.com, which was formed in 1997 and began operating in 1998. The company is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut and operates as a Delaware corporation. In 2018, it changed its name from The Priceline Group to Booking Holdings. Its mission is “to make it easier for everyone to experience the world.” Today, the group connects consumers, travel service providers, and restaurants through five primary consumer-facing brands: Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, and OpenTable.
Booking.com is the group’s central accommodation platform and remains one of the largest travel marketplaces globally. At the end of 2025, it offered accommodation reservation services for approximately 4.4 million properties across more than 220 countries and territories and in over 40 languages, including around 500,000 hotels, motels, and resorts and about 3.9 million homes, apartments, and other unique places to stay. In 2025, Booking.com also offered flights in over 55 markets, alongside tours and activities, rental cars, and ground transportation across thousands of locations worldwide.
In 2025, Booking Holdings processed 1.235 billion room nights, 88 million rental car days, and 68 million airline tickets, generating $186.1 billion in gross bookings and $26.9 billion in revenue. Substantially all revenue still came from online travel reservation services. Additional revenue came from payment facilitation, advertising, restaurant reservation and management services, and travel-related insurance offerings.
Booking Holdings runs a global travel marketplace through Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, and OpenTable. The group connects traveler demand with accommodation providers, airlines, car rental companies, attractions operators, and restaurants across more than 220 countries and territories. In 2025, it generated $26.9 billion in revenue, split into $17.8 billion of merchant revenue, $8.0 billion of agency revenue, and $1.2 billion of advertising and other revenue. Substantially all revenue still came from online travel reservation services.
The key model shift is the move toward merchant transactions at Booking.com. Merchant gross bookings reached $130.0 billion in 2025, up 24.8%, while agency gross bookings fell 8.7% to $56.1 billion. Merchant mix rose to 70% of total gross bookings, up from 63% in 2024. This gives Booking more control over checkout, payments, merchandising, and cross-sell across its Connected Trip strategy. It also raises payment processing, fraud, and service costs, which puts pressure on margins even as the revenue mix improves.
Booking Holdings remains one of the largest online travel platforms globally. In 2025, it processed 1.235 billion room nights and generated $186.1 billion in gross bookings. Booking.com’s accommodation breadth, its growing alternative accommodation base, its rising merchant mix, and its expanding cross-sell into flights and attractions reinforce that scale advantage. Competition remains intense from Airbnb, Vrbo, direct hotel and airline channels, Google, and newer AI-powered assistants that aim to intercept search, trip planning, and booking before the traveler reaches Booking’s own platforms.
China remains strategically important for Booking Holdings as a major outbound travel market and as part of its broader Asia growth strategy. In its 2025 annual report, Booking again described China as a difficult market for foreign travel platforms, noting that local requirements can restrict foreign participation. The company also highlighted China’s Personal Information Protection Law as a source of added compliance cost and complexity. At the same time, Booking said it continued to invest in localization in key geographies such as Asia, and its 2025 room-night growth was driven primarily by Europe and Asia. Agoda remains the group’s main brand focused on Asia-Pacific travelers.
The clearest demand signal from China is the rebound in cross-border travel. Trip.com reported that bookings on its international OTA platform rose by around 60% in 2025 and that it served about 20 million inbound travelers during the year. In the third quarter of 2025, Trip.com also said outbound flight and hotel bookings had climbed to around 140% of 2019 levels. That points to a strong recovery in Chinese outbound demand, which supports Booking.com and Agoda in overseas accommodations, flights, and attractions.
Competition in China remains intense. Trip.com continues to set the pace in online travel, while Meituan keeps expanding its travel reach through local traffic, hotel partnerships, and bundled consumer offers. Booking’s position is more selective. Agoda has partnered with Meituan to place overseas hotel inventory on Meituan, including “Chinese Preferred” hotels in about 1,000 destinations worldwide, alongside AI-based content initiatives for more than 3,000 hotels. The regulatory backdrop also shifted in January 2026, when Trip.com disclosed that China’s SAMR had opened an anti-monopoly investigation into the company. That does not remove Booking’s structural challenges in China, but it shows that the market remains competitive, locally controlled, and politically sensitive.
Booking entered 2026 from a stronger base than the earlier Q3 snapshot suggested. In 2025, gross bookings rose 12% to $186.1 billion, revenue rose 13% to $26.9 billion, and adjusted EBITDA rose 20% to $9.9 billion. Adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 36.9% from 35.0% in 2024. For 2026, management targets low double-digit reported growth in both gross bookings and revenue, or high single-digit growth on a constant-currency basis, with adjusted EBITDA growth faster than revenue and adjusted EPS growth in the mid-teens. Q1 2026 guidance points to 5% to 7% room-night growth and 14% to 16% reported growth in both gross bookings and revenue.
This Company Profile was written by Dominik Diemer
Disclaimer:
All logos are the property of their respective owners and are used for illustrative purposes only.
This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the featured companies.
No Financial Advice.
