Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG) CFO Ewout Steenbergen outlined the company’s medium-term financial framework and discussed regional growth priorities, marketing channel shifts, and the implications of generative AI and “agentic” travel tools during a fireside chat at the Morgan Stanley 2026 TMT conference.
Medium-term targets and recent performance
Steenbergen said Booking’s medium-term growth model is an “eight/eight/fifteen framework,” referring to expected growth of roughly 8% in gross bookings and revenue, and 15% in earnings per share. He said 2025 results exceeded that framework on a constant-currency basis, with “10%/10%/18%.”
Regional focus: Asia, the U.S., and Europe
On Asia, Steenbergen emphasized Agoda as the company’s primary Asia-focused brand, describing it as deeply localized in markets such as Korea through local user experience elements and payments. He also said Booking.com is investing in Asia and cited India as an example, noting that Booking.com recently added a domestic payment option and expanded beyond an agency-only model in that market, which he said opens growth opportunities. Steenbergen described Asia as expected to be the fastest-growing region over the next decade and said the company is focused on maintaining its position there.
In the U.S., he said the overall market is still growing at low single digits, while Booking has been growing at a low double-digit rate over roughly the past half year. He cited three drivers:
- Performance marketing optimization: Leaning into opportunities with attractive ROI through changes in bidding algorithms.
- B2B distribution: Growth from partners such as credit card companies and airlines that offer travel add-ons.
- Direct channel momentum: An increase in customers booking directly via the app or website, which he said began shifting around mid-2025 and reflects years of investment in brand and loyalty.
Asked about alternative accommodations in the U.S., Steenbergen called the category globally important and said Booking has about 8.6 million alternative accommodation listings, up about 8% year over year, with faster growth in the U.S. from a smaller base. He said the company is investing in product features such as host-traveler communications and in expanding supply. On take rates and host economics, he said U.S. fee transparency rules have changed the “optics,” and that overall fee and commission presentation has become more aligned across market participants, reducing what he described as a prior optical disadvantage for Booking’s all-in pricing approach.
On Europe, the company’s largest and most mature region, Steenbergen said Booking has been growing faster than the travel industry there and delivered high single-digit growth each quarter last year. He attributed Europe’s strength to the Booking app being a “go-to” planning tool, a broadening set of options across hotels, alternative accommodations, and flights, and loyalty value through the Genius program. He noted Ryanair was added as flight supply last year. He declined to break out direct mix by region but said markets where the company is stronger tend to have better direct mix, and added that Agoda’s direct mix may be higher than outside observers assume.
Marketing mix and the rise of social channels
Steenbergen said the company has increased performance marketing spend on social platforms beyond Meta, after building measurement capabilities to ensure incrementality and acceptable ROI. He said social spend was “a couple of $100 million a quarter,” and that it grew 13% year over year in the fourth quarter.
He contextualized that within the company’s overall marketing and incentives budget, saying total marketing spend last year was a little over $8 billion. He also referenced merchandising incentives—treated as contra revenue—of roughly $2 billion, describing the combined pool as about $10 billion that the company continually reallocates based on returns. He added that large language models could become “diversifiers” of paid channels over time, though he characterized them as relatively smaller at present.
AI, “agentic” travel, and the question of disintermediation
Steenbergen argued that investor concerns about disruption from horizontal AI agents underestimate the complexity of travel fulfillment, including customer service, payments, tax and regulatory issues, and data privacy. He also emphasized the importance of trust and support when disruptions occur, giving an example tied to conflict in the Middle East and Gulf region and the need to assist travelers with cancellations, refunds, and rebookings. He recounted asking an LLM platform for help canceling and refunding a flight and said the response indicated the system could not directly perform the transaction, characterizing itself as a “travel strategy advisor, not the one pushing the button.”
He said traffic coming from LLMs to Booking is currently “very small” and “not growing,” describing it as stable month to month. He said many users appear to use LLMs for research and itinerary-building, but still book through trusted travel platforms, while acknowledging that behavior could change over time.
To protect and extend its direct relationship with travelers, Steenbergen said Booking is developing agentic tools across its brands to deliver an end-to-end experience “pre-trip, in-trip, post-trip,” including proactive itinerary adjustments, personalization, and coordination across trip components. He cited examples already in market, including “Penny” on Priceline, along with ongoing work at Agoda and Booking.com, and noted OpenTable has an AI concierge. He said investors should expect progress this year and suggested the conversation would look different a year from now as more tools become visible on the platforms.
Operational savings and reinvestment plans
On cost efficiencies, Steenbergen said Booking realized concrete savings in 2025 primarily through customer service, citing spend slightly below 2024 despite roughly 10% higher volumes. He said agentic tools reduced average handling time and the “contact rate” requiring human agents, and that average cost per booking declined about 10% while customer satisfaction held up. He said there is more potential in customer service in 2026, while other GenAI savings areas were “a little bit too early” to detail.
He also reviewed the company’s transformation program and reinvestment approach. Steenbergen said the company increased transformation savings targets to $500 million to $550 million and achieved that by year-end 2025. He said Booking introduced a self-funded reinvestment program of $170 million in 2025 and scaled it to $700 million in 2026. He said the $700 million in investments are expected to drive about $400 million of additional revenue this year, supporting the company’s higher top-line growth outlook, with an approximate net bottom-line impact of $300 million. He added that the company expects about $250 million of additional in-year savings from the transformation program, which he said helps self-fund the reinvestment.
In a discussion of AI hype, Steenbergen cautioned that widely cited figures about GenAI writing 30% to 50% of code do not necessarily translate to equivalent productivity gains across developers, given other parts of the software development process. He said the company intends to use increased development capacity to build more in the future.
Addressing concerns about Google, Steenbergen described Google as a major partner and said Booking relies on real-time connectivity with 4.4 million properties. He noted that close to 90% of room nights booked on Booking’s platforms come from independent hotels, alternative accommodations, and smaller chains, and said the value proposition includes fulfillment, payments across more than 100 payment forms and more than 50 currencies, and tools that help suppliers manage how they appear and promote. He said Google has stated publicly it does not plan to be an OTA or merchant of record and will remain a lead generator, and he said he is not concerned about Google becoming a direct inventory aggregator.
About Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG)
Booking Holdings Inc is a global online travel company that operates a portfolio of consumer brands and technology platforms that facilitate the search for and booking of travel services. The company’s businesses focus on accommodations, transportation and related travel services through consumer-facing websites and apps as well as partner distribution channels. Booking Holdings was originally founded as Priceline in the late 1990s and adopted the Booking Holdings name in 2018; it is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Its core offerings include online reservations for hotels, vacation rentals and other lodging; flight and car rental search and booking; and ancillary services that support travel planning and on-property experiences.
