Booking Holdings

Expedia Group's mission statement updated from "The World's Travel Platform" to a more modest blurb may be sending a message to its employees. If any were complacent under the old regime, they'd better be full of hustle to tackle a changing competitive landscape.

Booking.com clearly operates in Airbnb's shadow in short-term rentals. Although long-term stays are currently a hot commodity, Booking.com is tardy in enabling such capabilities. That's a fitting symbol for the current state of play.

The bean counters, meaning the financial experts, at all of the major online travel companies have their work cut out for them as they monitor and try to predict the shape and timing of any potential travel recovery. These companies need to be nimble, and hoard their cash.

Stay deep or go wide? Online travel companies from Expedia to Airbnb and Booking.com are grappling with these issues. Focusing on core products can clearly be a winning formula, but when you are a public company, pressure to generate growth from new areas is a constant conundrum.

Booking.com has prided itself on being a household name in its European home base, but will have a tough time avoiding a European Commission designation of gatekeeper. Such stature could bring increased restrictions.

Thursday was a historic day for Airbnb and the travel industry at large. Airbnb is a excellent business, but is it a $100 billion business?

Airbnb played the Booking.com-like performance marketing game in 2019, and got burned as losses piled up and revenue growth didn't keep pace. A centerpiece of Airbnb's roadshow is to show that its brand advantage and repeat visitor dynamics mean it doesn't have to deploy the same strategy as its peers.

Before the pandemic turned the world sideways, nearly 12 percent of Airbnb's revenue last year came from its top 10 cities. But among them, cities like Lisbon and San Diego are taking radical steps to limit their short-term rental portfolios. Are investors overlooking the likelihood of vastly more stringent regulations?

The entire hospitality industry would agree that short-term rentals led the tentative recovery in the spring and into the summer in many parts of the world. But a key question will be how will they respond when hotels and cities come back in earnest — and with vaccines a real possibility, they certainly will.

If Airbnb hasn't already devoted resources anew to HotelTonight and expanding its hotel business, the short-term rental giant assuredly will once it goes public. After all, in addition to Google, Airbnb sees online travel agencies, with their wide breadth of accommodations' offerings, as its most significant set of competitors.