Online travel
Online travel covers the consumer-facing platforms used to research, book and manage flights, hotels, alternative accommodation, car rentals and packages. The category passed pre-pandemic travel volumes in 2024 with global online travel gross bookings above $1T; mobile share now exceeds 60% of bookings at the major OTAs. Booking Holdings and Expedia Group together capture the majority of Western OTA revenue; Airbnb anchors alternative accommodation; Trip.com Group dominates Asia outside Japan and Korea. The economics are concentrated: take rates of 10-25% on hotels and 3-10% on flights generate gross profits that the OTAs reinvest heavily in Google performance marketing, which sits as the binding cost line for the entire category.
The sector spans hotel OTAs, alternative accommodation, flight metasearch and OTAs, packaged travel, business travel platforms, car rental and ground transport, vacation rental management, and cruise.
Revenue comes from a mix of hotel and accommodation take rates, flight commissions and ancillaries, advertising and sponsored placement fees from hoteliers and airlines, package and bundle markups, and a growing financial-services tier including insurance, FX and BNPL.
Online travel is part of Consumer internet.
$707B
Global market size
38
Public companies
Key VC investors
Key strategic buyers
How online travel companies monetize?
Online travel companies monetize through hotel take rate, alternative accommodation take rate and flight ancillaries.
Hotel take rate
Booking Holdings and Expedia retain 10-25% commission on hotel bookings. The largest single revenue line for both companies, anchored by long-tail independent hotels rather than chains.
Alternative accommodation take rate
Airbnb takes a split 3% host fee and 14-16% guest fee on bookings, blending to a ~15-16% all-in take rate. Higher than chain-hotel margins given the long-tail host base.
Flight ancillaries
Commission on flight bookings (typically 1-5%) plus margin on baggage, seat selection and travel insurance. Lower margin than hotels but volume drives basket attach.
Advertising
Sponsored hotel placement, metasearch CPCs from hoteliers and airlines, and brand advertising. trivago, Tripadvisor and Trip.com Group's metasearch businesses run primarily on this.
Packages & bundles
Markup retained when an OTA bundles flight, hotel, car or activity into a single basket. Higher conversion and basket value than standalone hotel bookings.
Fintech & ancillary services
Travel insurance, FX conversion fees, BNPL options (Affirm partnerships) and gift cards. Small but rapidly growing line at Booking, Expedia, Airbnb and Hopper.
Online travel valuations in May 2026
Public online travel comps trade at 1.7x EV/Revenue. Median revenue multiple across online travel M&A deals was 1.4x in the last 12 months. Median revenue multiple across online travel VC rounds was 17x in the last 12 months.
1.7x
Median EV/Revenue as of May 2026 for public online travel companies
4.7x
Booking Holdings is the highest valued public online travel company based on EV/Revenue (excluding outliers)
1.4x
Median EV/Revenue across online travel M&A deals in the last 12 months
17x
Median EV/Revenue across online travel VC rounds in the last 12 months
Online travel market segments
Online travel spans hotel OTAs, alternative accommodation and flight metasearch and OTAs.
Hotel OTAs
Online travel agencies primarily monetising chain and independent hotel bookings. Booking.com (Booking Holdings), Hotels.com and Expedia.com (Expedia Group), Agoda (Booking Holdings) and Trip.com (Trip.com Group) anchor the category globally.
Alternative accommodation
Marketplaces for short-term rentals, vacation homes and unique stays. Airbnb (NASDAQ: ABNB), Vrbo (Expedia Group), Booking.com's home segment and Hopper all compete here; Airbnb's 5M+ host base and 8M+ active listings define the scale benchmark.
Flight metasearch & OTAs
Flight-led metasearch and OTAs running price comparison plus direct booking. Skyscanner (Trip.com Group), Google Flights, Kayak (Booking Holdings), Kiwi.com and Hopper compete on UX and price discovery.
Packaged & all-inclusive travel
Bundled flight + hotel + transfer packages, particularly strong in European outbound markets. TUI (Frankfurt-listed), Jet2 (LSE: JET2), Loveholidays (Livingbridge) and On the Beach Group (LSE: OTB) lead UK and EU package travel.
Business travel platforms
Corporate travel management platforms operating on the consumer-side commission economics. Navan (formerly TripActions), Egencia (American Express GBT), TravelPerk and Spotnana have raised significant funding into the corporate-travel modernisation thesis.
Car rental & ground transport
Car rental aggregators and ground transport bookings inside OTAs. Rentalcars.com (Booking Holdings), Discover Cars and Auto Europe anchor the bookings layer; Uber for rides feeds connected mobility inside OTA flows.
Vacation rental management
Property managers running short-term rentals at scale on behalf of homeowners. Vacasa (delisted 2024), Casago, Sykes Holiday Cottages (Vacasa), Awaze (Platinum Equity) and Evolve are the larger names.
Cruise & specialty
Cruise sales aggregators and specialty travel verticals. CruiseDirect, Cruise.com, ROL Cruise and Iglu Cruise generate retained commission off the major lines (Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian).
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For category-leading technology companies who are exploring exit alternatives with either financial or strategic acquirers.
Key online travel KPIs to track
Gross bookings, take rate, room nights and marketing as percent of revenue are the metrics investors track in online travel.
| KPI | Definition |
|---|---|
| Gross bookings | Total transaction value of bookings made on the platform. Headline volume metric for Booking, Expedia, Airbnb and Trip.com Group. |
| Take rate | Commission and fees as a percentage of gross bookings. Booking and Expedia report blended take rates around 14-15%; Airbnb's blended rate is ~14-16%. |
| Room nights / nights booked | Unit volume metric - Booking and Airbnb both report nights booked each quarter as the operational scale measure. |
| ADR | Average daily rate. Tracks pricing strength of accommodation supply; combined with nights gives revenue per booking. |
| Marketing as % of revenue | Performance marketing spend (largely Google) divided by revenue. Sits at 30-50% of revenue at Expedia and Booking; the binding cost line for the category. |
| Direct/unpaid mix | Share of bookings coming via direct, app or unpaid channels rather than paid marketing. Airbnb runs much higher direct mix than Booking or Expedia, which structurally explains the margin differential. |
| Repeat customer rate | Share of bookings from previously transacted customers. Drives lifetime value and explains the gap between Airbnb and traditional OTA economics. |
| Active listings / supply growth | Number of properties on platform. Airbnb's 8M+ active listings define the scale benchmark; Vrbo and Booking.com Homes pursue different supply strategies. |
Main online travel players globally
The most active online travel companies and category leaders globally.
| Company | HQ | Overview |
|---|---|---|
Booking Holdings bookingholdings.com |  Norwalk | Largest online travel company globally, parent of Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Kayak, OpenTable and Rentalcars.com. NASDAQ: BKNG; generated $23B in revenue and $5.9B net income in 2024. |
Expedia Group expediagroup.com | Seattle | Parent of Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Vrbo, Orbitz, Hotwire and Trivago. NASDAQ: EXPE; generated $13.7B in 2024 revenue; CEO Ariane Gorin took over from Peter Kern in May 2024. |
Airbnb airbnb.com | San Francisco | Largest alternative accommodation marketplace with over 8M active listings and 5M+ hosts in 220+ countries. NASDAQ: ABNB; generated $11.1B in 2024 revenue with EBITDA margins above 35%. |
Trip.com Group group.trip.com |  Singapore | Largest online travel company in Asia, owner of Trip.com, Ctrip, Qunar and Skyscanner. NASDAQ: TCOM; HQ relocated to Singapore from Shanghai. Generated over RMB 53B in 2024 revenue. |
MakeMyTrip makemytrip.com |  Gurgaon | Largest Indian OTA, owner of MakeMyTrip, Goibibo and redBus. NASDAQ: MMYT; Trip.com Group remains a major shareholder. India's outbound travel growth has driven materially better 2024 results. |
Trivago trivago.com |  Düsseldorf | Hotel metasearch platform; majority-owned by Expedia Group. NASDAQ: TRVG; revenue has fallen materially from the 2017 peak as direct OTA marketing has eroded metasearch economics. |
Tripadvisor tripadvisor.com | Needham | Travel reviews and metasearch platform, also owner of Viator (experiences) and TheFork (restaurant bookings). NASDAQ: TRIP; Viator has outpaced legacy Tripadvisor segment growth materially through 2023-24. |
Kayak (Booking Holdings) kayak.com | Stamford | Travel metasearch brand inside Booking Holdings, covering flights, hotels, cars and packages. Generates referral revenue from OTAs and direct supplier sites; sits inside the BKNG consolidated P&L. |
TUI Group tuigroup.com | Hannover | Largest packaged travel company in Europe, with airlines, hotels and cruise lines. Frankfurt-listed (TUI1) after delisting from London in 2024; generated over €23B revenue in FY24. |
Hopper hopper.com |  Montreal | Mobile-first travel app that built a fintech-led monetisation model (price freeze, cancel-for-any-reason, change-for-any-reason). Raised at $5B in 2022; runs B2B fintech-for-travel side via HTS Worldwide. |
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Key online travel market trends
Google search and AI changing the funnel, Airbnb regulatory pushback and Asian outbound travel recovery are reshaping online travel right now.
Google search and AI changing the funnel
Google rolled out AI Overviews and Search Generative Experience travel features through 2024-25, putting itineraries and bookable results directly in search. OTA dependence on Google performance marketing (30-50% of revenue) means the AI rollout is the binding structural risk for Booking, Expedia, Trip.com Group and Tripadvisor.
Airbnb regulatory pushback
New York banned most short-term rentals under 30 days in 2023; Barcelona announced a 2028 ban on all short-term rentals; Berlin, Paris and Amsterdam tightened limits. Airbnb's response has been geographic diversification, longer-stay growth and the Airbnb Experiences relaunch announced in 2024.
Booking-Expedia margin convergence
Booking's 30%+ operating margins still outpace Expedia's high-teens, but Expedia's brand consolidation under CEO Peter Kern (2020-2024) closed some of the technology gap. Both companies have leaned into loyalty (Genius, One Key) to reduce Google dependency.
Asian outbound travel recovery
Chinese outbound travel reached ~85% of 2019 levels by late 2024, lifting Trip.com Group and benefiting Booking and Agoda in Asia. India's outbound travel grew 25%+ for two straight years; MakeMyTrip and Trip.com Group have both leaned into the corridor.
Vacasa and the short-term rental management squeeze
Vacasa delisted in 2024 after its share price collapsed from the 2021 SPAC; the broader STR management category is structurally hard given low margins and high CAC. Airbnb's superhost-led model has out-competed professional property managers in most markets.
Fintech embedded in travel
Affirm, Klarna and Uplift partnerships have made BNPL standard at the OTAs. Hopper's price-freeze and cancel-for-any-reason products generate ancillary revenue at the same scale as flight commissions; Booking Trip Protection has scaled materially since 2023.
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