US travel giant Booking Holdings shrugs off Airbnb

Bloomberg

Travel giant Booking Holdings Inc. jumped in after-market trading after beating analysts’ profit estimates and talking down the threat of new competition from Airbnb Inc.
Booking, which changed its name from the Priceline Group, grew the total number of non-hotel accommodations on its websites to 1.2 million, a 53 percent jump from 2017. Airbnb has about 4.3 million.
Asked about that company’s new push into hotels, Booking’s main business, Chief Executive Officer Glenn Fogel didn’t seem worried.
“I don’t see that one company coming in and saying they’re going to offer a small number of select hotel type properties as a big issue,” Fogel said. “We’ve been facing competition of all sorts for a long time.”
Booking is pouring resources into alternative accommodation, the fastest-growing part of the online travel market. Separately, the company has switched from a focus on online advertising through travel search companies like Trivago NV, to a strategy of focusing more on TV ads, which it says have more long-term benefits.
That change initially hurt Booking’s bottom line, but this quarter shows the switch is starting to pay off.
Gross travel bookings, which shows the total amount of travel booked
on the company’s various websites, was $18 billion, compared with
$15.1 billion in 2017.