Specialist
Former executive at Booking.com
Agenda
- Booking Holdings’ (NASDAQ: BKNG) GBV (gross booking value) trends, discussing ADRs (average daily rates), booking volume growth and vacation rental penetration
- Near-term demand outlook, highlighting potential inflation and recession impacts on leisure demand
- Take rate outlook and Booking’s Preferred Partner Programme adoption
- Merchant vs agency mix and profitability implications
Questions
1.
How are you thinking about GMV growth for Booking Holdings, given the macro backdrop?
2.
Do you think Booking carries too much exposure to Europe in its current form, given the relative weakness of the European macro environment vs in North America?
3.
By how much do you think ADRs [average daily rates] came down in the previous cycle?
4.
Do you think ADRs would come down more in the current cycle, just given the ramp that ADRs have been on over the last couple of years, particularly since 2021?
5.
Would you expect the ADRs to be rolling over in Q4 2022? Is there any evidence of hotels blinking and bringing ADRs down?
6.
In Q2 2022, Booking did about USD 35bn in GBV [gross booking value], which was 246 million room nights. Do you think the company would exceed that in Q3 2022? It is expecting record revenues in Q3.
7.
How much of the growth you mentioned do you think is attributable to strategic initiatives that Booking has embarked on vs just structural demand post-pandemic? Do you think the performance should be able to be replicated in Q2 and Q3 2023?
8.
How do you think about take rate evolving on the hotel economic side?
9.
What contribution do you think North America makes for the Booking business at present? The company has spoken about wanting to have more exposure to that market. Where do you think it is in that process?
10.
Do you expect North America growth to impact the take rate at all, just because the composition of that market is far more brand-led than Europe, which is independents?
11.
Can Booking do anything with the Preferred Partner Programme to drive effective take rate higher? Can the company get more people into the programme?
12.
Do you think Genius would be a meaningful portion of Booking’s room nights or bookings at this stage?
13.
How does Genius work from an economic perspective? It seems to be a win-win for Booking, as it gets higher conversion, the promotional rate and the hotel pays for it.
14.
How important do you see B2B partnerships being for Booking’s demand generation? You mentioned wholesale.
15.
Do you think Booking growing the B2B business, at a high level, nets out neutral from a margin perspective? Obviously you don’t pay for the customer acquisition, but presumably you’d have a lower take rate because you’d be sharing that with the partner.
