Key Takeaways
- Booking.com’s alternative accommodation room nights grew 4% during the second quarter
- The platform now carries 9.1 million vacation rental and alternative accommodation listings, up 8% from last year
- Booking Holdings beat its own guidance as gross bookings climbed 9% to $51 billion during its Q2 earnings call on Aug. 4
Booking.com had plenty of good news to share with investors during its second-quarter earnings call on Tuesday afternoon.
The company, officially known as Booking Holdings, added more vacation rental inventory and booked more alternative accommodation stays during Q2 2026, giving owners another sign that homes, apartments and other STR properties remain a major part of the travel giant’s business.
Alternative accommodation room nights increased 4 percent from a year prior, while the number of available listings climbed 8 percent to 9.1 million, according to the company’s second-quarter earnings presentation on Aug. 4.
The segment grew slightly slower than Booking Holdings’ overall room night total, which rose 5%, but the latest results show the company is still expanding its vacation rental supply at a very healthy pace.
The company had 8.4 million alternative accommodation listings one year ago and 8.8 million at the start of 2026.
That growing inventory gives travelers more choices beyond traditional hotels and keeps Booking.com firmly in the competition for vacation rental guests alongside competitive platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo.
The broader company also delivered a stronger quarter than expected. Booking Holdings beat the high end of its guidance across its major financial metrics, with gross bookings rising 9% to $51 billion and revenue increasing 8% to about $7.4 billion.
Adjusted EBITDA reached roughly $2.6 billion, up 9%, while adjusted earnings per share increased 15%.
“The underlying desire to travel remained resilient,” CEO Glenn Fogel said in the company’s earnings release.
That resilience was especially visible closer to home.
Fogel told analysts that domestic and regional travel remained relatively healthy even as higher airfares, reduced flight capacity and conflict in the Middle East weighed on some long-haul international trips during his presentation.
“I am pleased to report that our teams delivered another quarter of strong execution. We exceeded the high end of our guidance across all of our key financial metrics while continuing to invest in the strategic priorities that we believe will drive long-term value,” Fogel said, adding, “Despite continued geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty during the second quarter, the underlying desire to travel remained resilient.”
Booking.com’s CEO said AI is already helping the company lower customer service costs per booking while improving the travel experience.
“During the quarter, we continued advancing AI capabilities across our portfolio, including beginning to roll out testing of Booking.com’s new AI-powered discovery experience, which helps travelers in the early inspiration phase of planning a trip,” Fogel said.
Booking.com keeps adding vacation rental supply
Vacation rental room night growth has cooled from the double-digit gains Booking.com reported last year, but the company’s continued investment in the category may be the more important number for owners watching the platform.
Alternative accommodation listings have increased from 8.1 million in early 2025 to 9.1 million today.
That steady expansion suggests Booking.com still sees homes, apartments and unique stays as an important part of how travelers plan trips, rather than a side business built around hotel demand.
The platform’s scale also gives owners access to travelers already using Booking.com for hotels, flights, rental cars and attractions. The company has increasingly worked to connect those purchases, creating opportunities to place vacation rentals in front of guests who may have originally arrived to book another part of their trip.
Booking Holdings is also finding savings elsewhere in the business that could support more investment in its platforms. The company raised the expected annual savings from its transformation program to about $650 million by the end of 2027.
Fogel said those savings would create more room to invest in strategic priorities, including “building better experiences for travelers” and “creating greater value for our partners.”
Related: Airbnb heads into Q2 earnings Aug. 6
Booking Holdings EVP and CFO Ewout Steenbergen told investors they predict total room nights will grow another 3% to 5% during the third quarter.
“Our expectation for gross bookings is lower than our prior expectation, primarily due to lower flight ticket growth, while our accommodation outlook remains largely unchanged,” Steenbergen said.
The outlook assumes domestic travel remains healthy while disruptions continue to affect some international routes through September.
For vacation rental owners, the second-quarter results are not another double-digit growth story.
They do show, however, that Booking.com is still attracting more stays, adding hundreds of thousands of listings and investing in a category that now sits at the center of its global accommodation marketplace.
