Skift Take
Booking.com keeps hinting that it intends to become a full-service travel agency. But these products are often less profitable than hotels. So it risks a bumpy ride. No wonder it is considering revamping its rewards program and building a chatbot to help with merchandising.
Online travel giant Booking.com has been testing ways to expand beyond its traditional specialty in hotel bookings.
In recent months, it has been experimenting with adding flight-hotel packages, airport taxis, and other services. It is also exploring a revamp of its loyalty program.
Some users have seen a test of a flight-plus-hotel feature — sometimes with an optional rental car and airport transfer add-on — across multiple language versions of its platform. The feature is being tested in places such as the U.S., France, Poland, and Turkey.
The tab we've seen is labeled "Flight + Hotel," "Vacations," or "Packages," depending on the test.
In March, Booking.com has been sourcing packages for its U.S. audience from its Priceline.com sister brand.
For a few months, it had been getting invenotry via the intermediary LastMinute for users based in the UK and Europe. The latter move enabled Booking to offload responsibility for complying with European and UK regulations about the sale of packaged travel.
A Booking.com spokesperson declined to comment, other than to confirm that the company has not announced that it will offer flight and hotel packages.
Lots of Experimentation
In the summer, Booking.com broke with its hotel focus and added features tabs to its homepage flights from Kayak, car rentals from RentalCars.com, and restaurant reservations from OpenTable — all sister brands of parent company Booking Holdings.
On Monday, we reported that Booking.com is stepping up its alternative accommodation push by more assertively adding short-term rental inventory to the whole home vacation rental properties it had already been signing up.
An expansion would carry risks. Booking.com's focus on accommodation has partly enabled it to be more profitable and have a more efficient marketing spend than Expedia Inc., the rival online travel conglomerate.
Airfares are less lucrative on average than hotels, due to lower commissions. Expedia sells more airfares as a proportion of revenue than Booking.com has.
Here's a look at a handful of Booking.com tests and moves.
Flights
Booking.c
