Booking Holdings says its continuing on its strategy to increase its direct business as it reported earnings for the second quarter of 2018.
Chief executive officer Glenn Fogel said direct business stands at about 50% of nights booked and that a significant proportion of those customers are new to the platform.
He was speaking during an analyst call for second quarter 2018 earnings with the company reporting an increase of 15% to gross travel bookings of $23.9 billion.
Revenue for the quarter was up 20% to $3.5 billion with net income up 36% to $997 million for the period. Rooms nights for the company increased 12% year-on-year.
The company says the World Cup impacted results, and that while there was a lift after the tournament, the “unusually” dryer weather in Europe was also a factor.
In terms of the direct strategy, Fogel refers to the channel as “one of the fastest-growing channels” for the business.
Chief financial officer David Goulden defines direct as non-paid channels where the company “has not paid for that user.”
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Fogel says the company has monitored the effectiveness of paid channels for the past year and is "open to channels that make themselves attractive" to the business in helping it build its brand. He says performance marketing is a dynamic marketplace, making it hard to predict particularly what competitors are going to do.
"For those advertising platforms that are willing to work with us to build better business for both, create a greater customer experience and help build our brand, we are willing to lean in and work with them. Some are more cooperative than others."
Responding to a question about working with Google, Fogel says it is a "symbiotic relationship" that works well for the company.
Booking Holdings also continues to build its travel offering through the development of its alternative accommodation platform, which now offers about 5.5 million listings of homes, apartments and other units.
A further strand is its development of a local experiences platforms with the "foundations being laid," according to Fogel, pointing to the acquisition of tours and activities technology provider FareHarbor as proof.
As for where it's at with wider travel offerings, Fogel says the company is already making changes, with Rentalcars brought under the Booking.com umbrella, and Agoda and Priceline are also working together more.
Given the company's recent investment in Didi Chuxing, Fogel also describes China as the "locomotive of worldwide travel growth."
He says that while it's more difficult for non-local players to work there, the company is maximizing the opportunity by developing its own brand and partnering with companies with a solid customer base such as Ctrip, Didi and Meituan-Dianping.
Using Didi as an example, he says the three pillars of the investment were about providing ground transportation to travelers in a market where car rental is not prominent, building the booking brand in front of Didi's audience and cooperating in terms of sharing inventory.