Booking Holdings CEO: We Can Replicate European Short-Term Rental Success in U.S.
Skift Take
Booking.com faces tough-going in U.S. short-term rentals. Its business model has hosts perceiving they pay lower commissions to Airbnb, and the latter is has a big brand advantage. At the same time, Booking.com needs to defend Airbnb incursions on its own European turf.
Booking Holdings is committed to building up its alternative accommodations supply in the U.S., and plans to do so through partnerships with property managers rather than via the more laborious task of recruiting individual hosts.
That's one takeaway from a wide-ranging interview that Skift conducted with Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel on Monday. He discussed the company's competition with Airbnb in the U.S., likened his "connected trip" strategy to the proliferation of superapps in Asia, and defended the company's mergers and acquisitions strategy in attractions and hotel services.
Asked about his recent statement that there's "no reason" Booking.com can't have a "very good business" in short-term rentals in the U.S., as it has done in Europe, Fogel pushed back on the notion that the two markets may be different in terms of inventory types or dynamics.
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Fogel said the basics of the two markets are not too different in that profit-motivated hosts want to fill rooms with paying guests. What is indeed a twist is that Booking.com built its alternative accommodations inventory in Europe before the emergence of Airbnb, but today in the U.S. Booking.com has to compete against this established player. New Focus When Booking.com entered the U.S. market several years ago, it focused on its hotel business, but Fogel expressed confidence that the company can now use the demand it can generate