Topic

BKNG

A collection of 10 issues

Airbnb 2Q'26: Widening the Gap with Booking

Airbnb reported an acceleration in nights and seats (N&S) booked, adding 14 million (+10%) N&S YoY which was the highest since 3Q’23. More importantly, Airbnb guided low double digit N&S growth even for 3Q’26 which indicates a likely sustained acceleration in the

Airbnb's Soul Search Beyond Homes

Programming Note: I am going to take a Summer Break for a couple of weeks. I am actually traveling to Bangladesh to spend some time with family after three and half years. I expect to start posting daily on June 8th onward. Yesterday, Booking CEO Glenn Fogel appeared on JP

Airbnb 1Q'26: Growth Acceleration Despite War Headwind

Airbnb reported +15% (FXN) revenue growth in 1Q’26 which was its highest topline growth over the last eight quarters. It is particularly impressive given the the backdrop of Iran war. Airbnb mentioned growth accelerated from January to February but then experienced a “slight deceleration” in March due to cancellation

Why AI Is Unlikely to Kill OTAs

Online Travel Agency (OTA) stocks such as Booking and Expedia both reacted very positively yesterday after The Information reported OpenAI’s retreat from direct checkouts. From The Information: OpenAI is scaling back its plan to introduce shopping directly inside ChatGPT, marking a change in its high-profile effort to put

Booking vs Airbnb's 4Q'25, Booking's Response to Existential Question

Now that both Booking and Airbnb reported its 4Q’25, I will first compare and contrast their respective quarter through different KPIs. Then I will discuss some key takeaways from the call behind the paywall. In addition to “Daily Dose” (yes, DAILY) like this, MBI Deep Dives publishes one Deep

Booking on the Offense

Last week, Booking’s CFO Ewout Steenbergen attended Nasdaq Morgan Stanley London TMT Conference. Booking’s CFO re-iterated their “8-8-15” algorithm for the “next few years”. For the uninitiated, “8-8-15” stands for 8% gross bookings growth, 8% revenue growth, and 15% EPS growth. I also

Behind the scenes: Airbnb vs Booking

A subscriber from Thailand recently reached out to me and let me know that he has experience of hosting his home through Booking.com, Airbnb, and Agoda. He was gracious enough to allow me access by making me a co-host. It was intriguing to observe these platforms through the

Solving the "DoorDash Problem"

Nilay Patel from “The Verge” has recently been talking about the “DoorDash problem” for some consumer internet companies. What is the “DoorDash problem”? From The Verge: “Briefly, it’s what happens when an AI interface gets between a service provider, like DoorDash, and you, who might send an AI to

Booking: The shareholder friendly OTA king

You can listen to the Deep Dive here Booking’s modern identity as a dominant, European-centric travel aggregator obscures its chaotic origins as a quintessentially American dot-com darling: Priceline.com. The original company, founded by Jay S. Walker, launched in 1998 as Priceline.com. It was built on

The "humorless" and timeless machine of Booking Holdings, Portfolio Change

Almost three years ago, my friend Scuttleblurb described Booking in a way that I believe truly encapsulated the essence of the company: Booking is metrics – it iterates on performance marketing game mechanics and humorlessly monitors every bit of performance down the hour. Indeed, I doubt there is any better company