Booking.com Parent Eyes Job Cuts Amid Larger Reorg Plan

Booking.com is conducting a companywide review that could lead to job cuts.

The online travel agency’s parent said in a Friday (Nov. 8) regulatory filing that this review would include “an expected workforce reduction,” as well as cost reductions like looking for real estate savings and optimizing procurement.

“We believe these efforts will improve operating expense efficiency, increase organizational agility, free up resources that can be reinvested into further improving our offering to both travelers and partners, and better position the company for the long term,” the filing said.

“We will be consulting with works councils, employee representatives, and other relevant organizations, and expect to develop more clarity on these organizational changes, including with respect to timing, expected impact on employees, financial impact, and other aspects of the contemplated changes in due course.”

A report on the potential job cuts by Reuters noted that parent company Booking Holdings had 23,600 employees at the end of last year. A company spokesperson told the news outlet that the review is specific to Booking.com and not its other company brands, which include Priceline, Agoda, Kayak and OpenTable.

The news comes weeks after Booking Holdings reported better-than-expected gains in the third quarter, as well as early results from some growth initiatives.

The company’s efforts to bolster its “connected trip” vision, to continue building its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and to boost alternative accommodations all enjoyed progress during the quarter, Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel on an earnings call.

Bookings’ “connected trip” vision includes having its platform help customers with all areas of travel planning, including both accommodations and transportation services. The company saw a 40% year-over-year increase in “connected trip” transactions — those involving more than one travel vertical — with those transactions making up a high single-digit percentage of Booking.com’s total transactions.

“We believe by making it easier to plan and book multiple elements of a trip on our platform, we are providing a better overall booking experience for our travelers, and we have seen in past experiments that customers who choose to book a connected trip book more frequently with us and have a higher likelihood of booking directly with us in the future,” Fogel said.

The company is also among several players in the travel sector rolling out new artificial intelligence features, PYMNTS reported last week including natural language search capabilities and automated question-answering systems for its hotel listings, while testing AI-generated summaries of guest reviews.