Booking Holdings Reports 40% Increase in ‘Connected Trip’ Transactions

Booking Holdings is seeing early results from growth initiatives while also recording better-than-expected gains in the third quarter.

The company’s efforts to advance its “connected trip” vision, to continue developing its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and to grow alternative accommodations all saw progress during the quarter, Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel said Wednesday (Oct. 30) during a quarterly earnings call.

Booking Holdings — which owns the Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Kayak and OpenTable brands — offers online travel and related services in more than 220 countries and territories.

The company’s “connected trip” vision includes having its platform help customers with all areas of travel planning, including not just accommodations but also ground transportation, car rentals, cruises and other travel-related services.

During the third quarter, Booking Holdings saw a 40% year-over-year increase in “connected trip” transactions — those that involve more than one travel vertical — and saw those transactions account for a high single-digit percentage of Booking.com’s total transactions, Fogel said.

“We believe by making it easier to plan and book multiple elements of a trip on our platform, we are providing a better overall booking experience for our travelers, and we have seen in past experiments that customers who choose to book a connected trip book more frequently with us and have a higher likelihood of booking directly with us in the future,” Fogel said.

When it comes to AI, Booking Holdings has teams working to incorporate the technology into each of its platforms. The company announced Wednesday, before the earnings call, that the latest AI-powered features at Booking.com help travelers find their ideal property and ask specific questions about a property.

Fogel said during the call that a Booking.com generative AI tool that helps properties write responses to traveler queries has led to an increase in response rates to traveler messages; that a Priceline generative AI travel assistant called Penny has had over 3 million interactions with travelers; and that an Agoda generative AI tool for writing code has delivered measurable improvements in productivity per developer.

Booking Holdings’ offering of alternative accommodations has also grown, with the number of such properties listing on Booking.com up about 10% year over year, Fogel said.

“Our objective is to make sure we continue to provide great choices for our travelers across all property types,” Fogel said.

During the third quarter, compared to the same period a year earlier, Booking Holdings saw an 8% increase in room nights booked, a 9% increase in gross travel bookings and a 9% increase in total revenues, according to an earnings release.

Fogel said during the call that all three metrics exceeded the company’s expectations. The rise in room nights booked was driven by stronger performance in Europe, he said, adding that Asia saw double-digit growth, while the U.S. maintained stable growth.

“As we look ahead to the fourth quarter, we expect to continue to see healthy levels of room night growth as demand for travel remains resilient,” Fogel said. “I remain confident in the attractive growth profile of the travel industry, our competitive position, and our long-term growth and earnings model.”