Booking.com's Stagnant Mix of Short-Term Rental Stays Is a Not Necessarily Bad Thing
Photo Credit: Booking.com has the power to tilt customers toward short-term rentals versus hotels, but it is choosing not to. Skift / Neil van Niekerk
Skift Take
Booking.com and Airbnb are tough to compare. Although Booking.com officials would admit it has a lot to improve in short-term rentals, the company is playing its hotel hand to an advantage.
In an era when travelers see short-term rentals as an ever-more attractive choice, Booking.com's mix of bookings for these types of accommodations on its platforms in the third quarter ticked up just "slightly" compared with 2019 to around 30 percent, the company said. Isn't this an historic failure? Shouldn't Booking.com be gaining more ground?
OK, these were trick questions.
Although CEO Glenn Fogel isn't necessarily pleased with the pace of expanding the company's roster of what he calls "alternative accommodations" — it added 300,000 since 2021 — he doesn't mind the fact that around 70 percent of bookings on the site, around the same as a year earlier, were for hotels because they are more profitable than short-term rental stays.
"Well,
