Booking Holdings CFO Ewout Steenbergen says the company spends roughly $8 billion to $9 billion a year on paid customer-acquisition channels such as search, social media and metasearch. That estimate is not the same as the company’s reported $8.186 billion in total marketing expenses for 2025. His account of AI’s effect on trip planning is promising but preliminary: Booking says customers using its AI tools booked somewhat faster, converted at somewhat higher rates and canceled less often, while Steenbergen cautioned that the data is still early stage.
What does Booking Holdings spend to reach travelers?
In a Fortune interview published October 5, 2026, Steenbergen estimated that Booking Holdings spends roughly $8 billion to $9 billion annually on paid acquisition through channels including search, social and metasearch. He also estimated that about one-third of consumer traffic comes from paid channels and two-thirds directly. The traffic estimate describes where visitors come from; it is not a split of marketing expenses. Fortune’s report of the interview attributes both estimates to Steenbergen.
The company’s audited annual filing reports a different, broader measure: $8.186 billion in marketing expenses for 2025, up 12.5% from 2024. Marketing represented 4.4% of gross bookings and 30.4% of revenue that year, according to Booking Holdings’ 2025 Form 10-K. The filing figure and the CFO’s approximate paid-channel estimate are related, but they should not be treated as interchangeable: one is the annual marketing-expense figure reported in the filing, the other an interview estimate focused on paid acquisition.
Marketing efficiency is affected by more than the headline budget. Booking’s filing names costs per click, cancellation rates, currency exchange, search algorithms, channel mix and conversion from paid traffic as relevant factors. It also says average performance-marketing return on investment declined slightly in 2025, driven by changes in paid-traffic mix and increased social-media spending. That makes the economics of any shift in how travelers discover trips important—but not yet predictable from the figures available.
The Tool Desk
Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →#1 Best Overall
- KEEP YOUR TRAVEL ORGANIZED - This travel notebook will help you to plan your itinerary before start your trip, record trip journal and plan for your next travel. It can help you plan your trip effectively and maximize your time at each destination. By making a travel packing list, you've got all the important details sorted out. This trip organizer will help you relax and enjoy your trip, saving you a lot of time.
- FULFILL YOUR TRAVEL DREAMS - If you dream of seeing the world,but are worried about the difficulties and lack of planning during the trip, this travel planner organizer is for you! Use this travel log book to build your travel bucket list and start fulfilling it, explore new places, and plan exciting and safe trips
- RECORD THE GOOD MOMENTS - This travel journal for couples and includes safety tips, helpful travel info, common phrase translations, and a packing list to ensure you have everything you need while traveling. And keep track of travel important details: like flight and hotel reservations, packing list, budget, trip itinerary and lots of space for the daily adventures.
- HIGH QUALITY - This travel planner size of 5.8" x 8.5", just the perfectly size to fit in your backpack, purse or laptop case. Is used to high quality 100gsm pure white paper, elastic band and a back pocket for extra space.
- THE PERFECT GIFT - Travel Journal for kids daily tracking, give it to your children, friends, family as a gift for Birthday| Easter|Children's Day|Halloween|Thanksgiving|Christmas|Back to school and New Year's Day.
How is AI changing trip planning at Booking?
Booking Holdings frames its AI work within its “Connected Trip” strategy: joining travel inspiration and planning with booking, payment and assistance during the trip. Its 2025 filing describes near-term work to help consumers build a complete itinerary, from AI-supported inspiration and planning through suggestions for attractions while traveling. The company says its consumer-facing generative AI features across brands include trip planners, assistants for customer questions and a price-comparison tool.
The strategy addresses several stages of a traveler’s decision, rather than only replacing a search box. A traveler may use an AI feature to explore options or ask questions, compare prices, make a reservation and then get support or suggestions in destination. Booking’s filing says direct bookings and repeat behavior matter to marketing efficiency, and notes that mobile-app room-night share was in the mid-fifties in 2025, compared with the low-fifties in 2024. Booking.com listed approximately 4.4 million properties as of December 31, 2025: about 3.9 million alternative accommodations and 500,000 hotels, motels and resorts. These are company-reported figures, not a guarantee that every listing or AI feature is available in every market.
Booking’s Q2 2026 investor-relations highlights put Connected Trip transactions in the low double digits, alternative-accommodation mix around 37%, and B2C direct mix in the mid-sixties. These are company highlights for that quarter, not timeless measures of the business. Booking Holdings’ investor relations overview presents the figures in the context of the company’s quarterly results and Connected Trip vision.
What early results does Booking report?
Steenbergen told Fortune that customers using Booking’s AI tools were booking somewhat faster, converting at somewhat higher rates and canceling less often. He stressed that the data remains early stage. Those observations are interview claims, not an independently audited study establishing that AI caused the changes or showing their scale across all customers.
Quick wins for a faster PC:
Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Rank #3
- FULFILL YOUR TRAVEL DREAMS: If you dream of seeing the world, Clever Fox Travel Planner Organizer is for you! Use this travelers journal to build your travel bucket list and start fulfilling it, explore new places, and plan exciting and safe trips.
- TRIP WORTH BEING REMEMBERED: This travel log book journal helps you plan your trips in detail. You can use the travel diary journal to prepare lists of places to see and things to do, plan your itinerary and budget, and document memorable moments.
- CAREFREE JOURNEY: This travel journal for women and men includes safety tips, helpful travel info, common phrase translations, and a packing list to ensure you have everything you need while traveling.
- A5 FORMAT & PREMIUM QUALITY: This vacation planner measures 5.8 by 8.3 inches and has an eco-leather hardcover, thick 120gsm paper, pen loop, elastic, bookmark, pocket for loose notes, stickers, and user guide
- 60-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE - We will exchange or refund your travel journal for writing if you aren’t satisfied with travel journal notebook diary for traveler. Reach out to us via message to refund adventure journal for couples, women, men, family.
He also described an engineering measure that looks beyond code generated by AI: about 9,000 technologists using AI tools were associated with roughly 30% more production merge requests, which are changes tested and cleared through quality controls. This is a company-reported interview metric, not an independent productivity study, and the count is not simply a tally of AI-generated code.
For customer service, Steenbergen said booking units grew at a high single-digit rate while total customer-service costs declined slightly, alongside higher customer satisfaction and lower average servicing cost per booking. He presented these as signs of process redesign and AI use; Fortune’s account is the source for these operational claims, rather than an independently audited measurement of AI’s causal impact.
Rank #4
How does the company judge AI’s costs and returns?
Steenbergen described evaluating both benefits and costs. On the cost side, that includes monitoring token and licensing expenses and routing simpler tasks to lower-cost or open-source models. For engineering, he said the company considers a combined human-and-AI measure such as total IT cost per merge request, rather than treating the number of outputs alone as proof of value.
He said Booking aims to redesign processes end to end instead of merely adding AI to an existing workflow. That distinction matters: a tool can make one task faster without improving the overall cost, service quality or customer experience if the surrounding process remains unchanged.
Recommended Free Tools
The company’s 2025 Form 10-K says its Transformation Program had enabled about $550 million in annual run-rate savings by the end of 2025. That is a company-reported program figure; the filing does not identify it as savings caused solely by AI. The distinction is important when weighing AI’s returns against the company’s wider efficiency efforts.
Why the effect on marketing is still uncertain
AI-driven discovery could change how travelers find Booking’s brands and how much the company must pay to reach them. But the available figures do not establish whether AI will reduce acquisition costs, shift traffic away from paid search, increase bookings enough to offset new technology costs, or do some combination of these. Booking’s own filing lists channel mix, conversion, search algorithms and other variables that can move marketing efficiency.
Steenbergen acknowledged the difficulty of measuring returns, telling Fortune: “I think in this area there isn’t a perfect answer.” He added that even hyperscalers investing heavily in large language models may not know the return on investment in advance. The quote reflects his view in the interview, not an official company transcript of the summit.
For travelers, the practical takeaway is that Booking is building AI into discovery, planning and service, but its reported early signals do not establish that AI will consistently produce cheaper trips or better outcomes for every customer. For investors and observers of customer-acquisition costs, the key distinction is between promising early operating metrics and demonstrated, durable financial returns.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
