Booking Holdings spent $32B on advertising over the last 5 years.
In 2025 alone, the company spent $8.2B. The vast majority, over $7B, went towards acquiring high-intent travellers via paid search. This is how BKNG sources 40-45% of its gross bookings: a perfectly rational strategy but an acquisition channel which involves significant value transfer, mostly to Google.
We estimate indirect bookings cost BKNG ~60c for every $1 of net revenue.
Contrast this with direct bookings (55% of room nights) and that’s a 50+ point swing in contribution margin between its most profitable customers and those at the margin. At scale and capitalised, this translates into over $100B of value which Google extracts from BKNG, whose market cap currently sits at $135B.
What happens in a world where the traditional paid search interface is rapidly being abstracted away?
Consumers will increasingly delegate discovery, comparison, and decision-making to AI agents, retaining control mostly at the intent layer.
Th…