Booking Holdings Admits to Having Critical Failures Even Before the Pandemic
Skift Take
Booking Holdings hired a new marketing chief in 2019 because it knew that its brand marketing in the U.S. was falling short, particularly against household name Expedia. Booking is pivoting to address shortcomings, realizing finally you can't keep kicking the can down the road with basically the same strategy.
Booking Holdings, which calls itself the "largest, most profitable global online travel business in the world," got candid about some stubborn, multiyear failures on page 42 of its more than 100-page proxy report.
Despite notching a "solid" 2019, Booking Holdings stated Friday: "Nevertheless, 2019 was not without its challenges. Booking.com continues to under-index in the United States market, we did not see the desired results from Booking.com's brand marketing efforts and, for much of the year, we were slower than desired to meet a number of our goals for increased collaboration, cooperation and integration among our brands."
Failures in the U.S.
There's a ton to unpack in that telling sentence.
As far back as 2015, Amsterdam-based Booking.com spent an estimated $32.8 million on national TV ads in the U.S., and that doesn't even include online marketing spend. However, Booking's "under-index" admission Friday is a jargon-filled way to say the company has been unable to make sufficient headway against Expedia Group in its home market.
Consider the following Google Trends data showing web searches for Expedi
