Last Updated -
February 16, 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 July 1997 and began operating in 1998. Today the group is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, and operates as a Delaware corporation. In 2018, The Priceline Group renamed itself to Booking Holdings to match its brand portfolio.
The company is a travel technology group that connects consumers with travel suppliers and restaurants through online reservation and related services. Its stated mission is “to make it easier for everyone to experience the world.” Booking Holdings delivers most of its consumer demand through five primary brands: Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, and OpenTable.
Booking.com is the largest brand in the group and spans accommodations, flights, and other trip components across many markets. In 2024, Booking.com offered flights in over 55 markets, tours and activities in 1,700 cities, rental cars in over 42,000 locations, and ground transportation at about 1,900 airports. Booking Holdings generates substantially all revenue from enabling travel reservations, plus additional revenue from advertising, restaurant reservation and management services, and travel-related insurance offerings.
Booking Holdings runs a global, asset-light travel marketplace that matches traveler demand with supply from hotels, alternative accommodation hosts, airlines, car rental companies, and local experience providers. Substantially all revenue comes from online travel reservation services, split between merchant transactions where Booking facilitates payment and agency transactions where the traveler pays the supplier directly. Merchant revenue includes commissions, transaction net revenue, payment-facilitation economics, and ancillary fees such as travel insurance. Agency revenue is mostly commissions, with Booking.com representing the bulk of both categories.
A key model shift is the steady move toward merchant transactions at Booking.com, which increases control over the checkout, expands payment options, and supports bundling across trip components. In the first nine months of 2025, merchant revenue grew while agency revenue declined, reflecting that shift.
Booking Holdings positions itself as a leading global online travel platform across 220+ countries and territories through Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, and OpenTable. Its scale is reflected in 2024 gross bookings of $165.6 billion and revenue of $23.7 billion, with merchant taking a rising share. In Q3 2025, Booking reported gross bookings around $49.7 billion and revenue around $9.0 billion, showing continued volume growth while the mix keeps shifting toward merchant.
Competition is intense across both OTAs and platform models. Booking cites direct competition from alternative accommodation specialists like Airbnb and from Vrbo (Expedia), plus ongoing pressure from metasearch and other distribution channels that shape customer acquisition costs.
China is a strategically important source market for outbound travel, yet it remains a tough operating environment for foreign OTAs. Booking’s latest 10-K flags China-specific barriers such as local rules that restrict foreign participation, plus added compliance burden from China’s Personal Information Protection Law. In its Q3 2025 earnings call, management again called out Asia as a growth driver, and earlier results linked Asia-Pacific strength to the return of higher-income Chinese tourists traveling internationally as visa frictions eased.
Booking’s near-term setup is shaped by its Q3 2025 momentum and its outlook for Q4 2025, with full-year 2025 results scheduled for February 18, 2026.
This Company Profile was written by Dominik Diemer
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