Booking Holdings Sees Connected Trip Strategy as Critical for Post-Crisis Growth
Photo Credit: As shown in December 2019, Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, is 26 miles west of downtown Washington, D.C. https://flickr.com/photos/derberzerker/49282782206/ / Olaf Zerbock/derberzerker
Skift Take
Booking.com is a one-trick pony, but it's quite a trick. The brand shines at selling hotel stays online. Yet parent company Booking Holdings wants the brand to succeed at cross-selling all types of travel post-pandemic. That will be trickier.
The world's travelers may not all be for the taking by Booking Holdings. The $86 billion Connecticut-based conglomerate calls itself the "world's leading provider of online travel and related services." But the company still has work to do on its machinery for taking the customers it has and cross-selling them with multiple products — so called connected trips. It also may be running out of first-class mergers and acquisitions to add more traffic.
When Booking Holdings announced its second quarter earnings on Wednesday, most investors and analysts focused on short-term signals. Many analyst questions centered on the uneven pacing of the worldwide recovery from the pandemic and the effect on the travel sector.
On the short-term front, the booking giant's numbers were promising. In the three months ending June 30, Booking Holdings generated revenue of $2.16 billion. It had a net loss of $167 million. Compare that with the same quarter of 2019 before the pandemic struck, when the
