Booking Holdings sold about 430 million non-hotel room nights in 2025

On February 19, 2026, Rental Scale-Up reported that Booking Holdings generated roughly 430 million non-hotel room nights in 2025, positioning its alternative accommodation business at approximately 80–85% of Airbnb's total nights. The analysis, published by PriceLabs Head of Product Marketing Thibault Masson, detailed how Booking Holdings expanded its non-hotel inventory to rival Airbnb's global scale while maintaining a highly profitable core business.

The figures highlighted a shifting competitive dynamic in the short-term rental sector, as Booking Holdings utilized its broader travel infrastructure to capture professional supply and consumer demand. While Airbnb remained the more prominent brand in the consumer consciousness, Booking Holdings backed its alternative accommodation expansion with nearly $10 billion in annual operating profit, demonstrating that scale in the vacation rental market did not require the same cultural positioning.

What the data shows

The financial performance of both platforms in 2025 revealed distinct differences in scale, revenue, and profit margins. According to Rental Scale-Up, Airbnb recorded 490+ million nights and experiences booked, generating revenue of $11+ billion with an adjusted operating margin of ~28%. In comparison, Booking Holdings reported 1.2+ billion total room nights and revenue of $23+ billion, with an adjusted operating margin of ~37%.

A deeper look at Booking Holdings' full-year 2025 financial disclosures, released on February 18, 2026, showed that the company's total room nights grew 8% compared to 2024, reaching 1,235M. Full-year gross bookings reached $186.1B, representing a 12% increase compared to 2024, or approximately 10% on a constant currency basis. Booking Holdings' full-year revenue was reported at $26.9B, a 13% increase compared to 2024, or approximately 10% on a constant currency basis.

The company's alternative accommodation segment, which includes homes, apartments, guesthouses, bed and breakfasts, and aparthotels, made up 36% of Booking's total room nights. This segment grew about 10% year-over-year, representing roughly 430 million non-hotel room nights. During the fourth quarter of 2025, alternative accommodation room nights at Booking.com increased by about 9%, while constant currency accommodation average daily rates increased by about 1%.

Booking Holdings' profitability metrics remained strong throughout the year. The company reported a GAAP net income of $5.4B, which was an 8% decline compared to 2024, resulting in a GAAP net income margin of 20.1% compared to 24.8% in 2024. However, its adjusted EBITDA reached $9.9B, a 20% increase compared to 2024, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 36.9% compared to 35.0% in 2024. Free cash flow for the full year was $9.1B, representing a 15% increase compared to 2024. The company also reduced its share count by 22% since 2022 and increased its alternative accommodation mix by 1 percentage point year-over-year.

“We are pleased to report strong results for 2025, delivering double-digit revenue growth, expanding Adjusted EBITDA margin by 193 basis points (Net income margin was 20.1% in 2025 and 24.8% in 2024), and accelerating room night growth in every quarter,” said Glenn Fogel, Chief Executive Officer of Booking Holdings.

For the fourth quarter of 2025, Booking Holdings reported 285M room nights, representing 9% growth compared to 2024. Fourth-quarter gross bookings grew 16% to $43.0B, while revenue rose 16% to $6.3B. GAAP net income for the quarter rose 34% to $1.4B, with a net income margin of 22.5% compared to 19.5% in the fourth quarter of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $2.2B, representing a 19% increase, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 34.6% compared to 33.8% in the prior-year period.

How it was measured

The figures were compiled from two primary sources. Thibault Masson, Head of Product Marketing at PriceLabs and founder of Rental Scale-Up, published an analysis comparing the full-year 2025 results of Airbnb and Booking Holdings. This analysis utilized the public financial reports and earnings call commentary of both companies.

The second source was the official fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings release published by Booking Holdings on February 18, 2026. This release followed GAAP and non-GAAP accounting standards, with reconciliations provided for metrics such as adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow. Gross bookings were defined as the total dollar value of all travel services booked by customers, net of cancellations, generally inclusive of taxes and fees. Room nights tracked the total nights booked across all accommodation types, including hotels and alternative accommodations, net of cancellations. The direct channel mix, which represented the percentage of total room nights booked directly through Booking Holdings' platforms, was reported as a mid-fifties percentage over the trailing four quarters.

Infrastructure versus product design

The two companies positioned themselves differently to investors and partners, reflecting their contrasting operational strategies. Booking Holdings focused its messaging on its role as a global travel infrastructure provider. The company highlighted its ability to handle payments in 100+ payment methods, operate in 50+ currencies, manage compliance across hundreds of jurisdictions, and support millions of independent partners.

By contrast, Airbnb focused on product design, brand identity, and expanding its platform ecosystem. Throughout 2025, Airbnb concentrated on reducing booking friction, simplifying fees, improving checkout, removing low-quality listings, and increasing conversion rates. Airbnb also expanded its categories beyond traditional stays. In 2025, the company relaunched Experiences globally, launched Services such as chefs, photographers, and massages, re-emphasized boutique hotels, and expanded its Airbnb-friendly buildings program, which established apartment partnerships that formally allowed short-term rentals.

According to Rental Scale-Up, roughly half of Airbnb's Experiences bookings were not attached to a home stay. In cities like Paris, many of these experiences were booked by local residents rather than travelers, indicating Airbnb's effort to build a lifestyle platform that users engage with even when they are not traveling.

Loyalty mechanics and discounting

Loyalty programs represented another area of strategic divergence, though Airbnb began experimenting with mechanisms similar to Booking's established system. Booking Holdings utilized its long-standing Genius loyalty program, where guests qualified for benefits based on their booking frequency. These benefits included automatic 10–20% discounts, free breakfast at some properties, room upgrades, and priority support. In 2025, higher-tier Genius travellers accounted for more than half of Booking's total room nights, making the program a structural driver of visibility, pricing expectations, and repeat booking behavior.

Airbnb, which historically resisted formal loyalty programs, began testing a model where hosts offered 20% discounts to highly rated guests. In exchange for these discounts, participating hosts received improved search visibility. Rental Scale-Up noted that this test did not constitute a formal program, as there was no permanent enrollment, no tier branding, and no ongoing obligation for hosts. However, the economic mechanism mirrored Booking's approach by trading host margin for platform exposure.

Transaction depth versus lifestyle habit

Both companies sought to capture revenue beyond accommodation bookings, but they approached expansion from different angles. Booking Holdings focused on the "Connected Trip," which aimed to increase the number of services booked for a single journey. In 2025, Booking Holdings reported that airline tickets booked reached 68 million, representing a 37% increase. Attractions bookings grew nearly 80%, and connected transactions, where travelers booked more than one category for the same trip, grew in the high-20% range.

Airbnb focused on increasing platform usage frequency outside of travel. By ensuring that about half of its Experiences bookings were not connected to a stay, Airbnb attempted to establish a habit of local usage, such as booking a chef for a dinner or hiring a photographer in one's home city. While Booking Holdings attempted to deepen the transaction value per journey, Airbnb worked to widen its ecosystem to capture non-travel spending.

Artificial intelligence as an efficiency play

Neither company framed artificial intelligence as an existential threat, choosing instead to present it as an efficiency engine to improve operating economics. Booking Holdings focused on using artificial intelligence to improve search, enhance recommendations, and reduce customer service costs. The company reported roughly a 10% reduction in customer service cost per booking.

Airbnb reported that artificial intelligence handled around 30% of English-language support requests in North America. The company also integrated the technology into its search functionality and app experience to improve conversion rates and support faster product iteration. Neither firm attempted to build foundational language models, opting instead to apply existing technology to lower operational expenses.

What the figures did not tell you

Despite the detailed financial disclosures, several key metrics remained undisclosed. Booking Holdings' chief executive officer acknowledged during the earnings call that the company was not yet where it wanted to be in United States alternative accommodations, but the reports did not provide a specific breakdown of U.S. non-hotel room nights or inventory growth. Consequently, the exact market share gap between Booking and Airbnb within the United States remained unclear.

Additionally, Airbnb did not publish the exact number of hosts participating in its 20% discount loyalty test, nor did it disclose the average visibility lift achieved by participating listings. The reports also did not detail the net profitability of Airbnb's newly launched Services segment or the specific transaction volume generated by its Airbnb-friendly buildings partnership. For Booking Holdings, while connected transactions grew in the high-20% range, the company did not disclose the exact percentage of total bookings that qualified as connected transactions.

What to take from it

For short-term rental hosts, property managers, and investors, the evolving strategies of Booking Holdings and Airbnb offer several key lessons:

• Monitor the share of bookings originating from loyalty programs like Genius to evaluate the impact of automatic discounts on average daily rates.
• Assess channel allocation strategies, especially in regions like the United States where Booking Holdings is actively expanding its alternative accommodation inventory.
• Compare platform-specific fees and payment processing capabilities, noting Booking's support for 100+ payment methods and 50+ currencies.
• Track the adoption of discount-for-visibility mechanics on Airbnb to determine if participating in experimental loyalty tests yields a net positive return.