Latest / STR Unpacked / Short Lets Were Booking's Fastest Growth. Now They're Its Slowest.
Transcript
- Ben: Morning and welcome to your short-term rental bulletin on the 5th of August. So interesting data coming out of booking.com this morning, which I want to dive into. so quarterly report. headline was good. So you're looking at room rates up 5% to $325 million, revenue is up 8% to $7.35 billion, and these are both ahead of expectations. But there's a few Details within these numbers that I think are worth diving into. So alternative accommodations, which is our part of the business, grew four percent in total. Now that is slower than usual. So if you go back a year, same quarter last year, alternative accommodations grew 10%, while total room lights grew 8%. So shortlets were the fastest growing part of booking dot com. and now we're the slowest. and this is for the second quarter in a row. So booking says that this is to do with what's happening in the Middle East, the conflict hitting the long haul travel and pushing fares up. And I think, you know, there's some argument in that. I think that's reasonable, but it doesn't explain why our segment decelerated harder than the hotels did. so Glenn Fogle told analysts that Google's AI overview puts pressure on organic search and direct traffic holds head. Steady in the mid-60s. So it's interesting, right? Because I think if the platform is no longer growing your segment faster than the market, then your channel will not fill up the calendar for you, or at least not at the same rate. So obviously, rate strategy, review score, everything. This is this is suddenly now becoming more important than ever. There's a really interesting take on this. So see this as part one, because part two. comes in tomorrow. Airbnb reports tomorrow night. So and I think that'll tell us whether this is something to do with booking.com or if this is a sector issue. So like I say, see this is part one. With the Airbnb data coming out tomorrow, we should find out this week whether this is a sector story, whether this is a booking dot com story, or and personally what I'm hoping for, what we're seeing is the rise of successful direct bookings. So Thank you for watching. Keep your eyes posted on this story, and I'll see you tomorrow. Bye bye.