OTAs' marketing spend exceeded $20B in 2025

The competition between online travel agencies (OTAs) to attract consumers to their platforms remains intense.

The largest players—Airbnb, Booking Holdings, Expedia Group and Trip.com Group—invested a combined $20 billion in sales and marketing in 2025. Booking and Expedia alone accounted for more than three quarters of the spend.

The figure represented a further year-over-year climb: OTAs have steadily increased sales and marketing spend over the past few years to $16.8 billion in 2023 and $17.8 billion in 2024.

As a percentage of total annual revenue, the marketing investment represented 30% for Booking Holdings, 50% for Expedia Group, 21% for Airbnb and 24% for Trip.com Group.

Despite talk of leaning in to traveler intent data, boosting loyalty programs and focusing on direct channels and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven efficiencies, OTAs don't appear to have reduced their reliance on paid channels. But is the mix evolving?

Gains and offsets

Booking Holdings invested $8.2 billion in marketing in 2025, up from $7.3 billion in 2024. In its recent earnings report, the company shared that its direct business was in the mid-60% range, similar to 2024. It also said that its Genius level 2 and 3 members accounted for a “high 50% share of room nights,” up from a mid-50% range in 2024.

However, growth in its direct channel was offset by investment in traditional performance marketing and social media marketing, according to CFO Ewout Steenbergen.

While president and CEO Glenn Fogel said the company invests where it sees opportunity, Steenbergen added that a 13% increase in investment in social media marketing and higher brand marketing in the fourth quarter boosted its spend. The company spent $1.9 billion on marketing in the quarter versus $1.6 billion in Q4 2024.

Expedia Group invested almost $7.4 billion in direct sales and marketing in 2025, up from $6.8 billion in 2024. The figure includes both B2C and B2B expenses.

CEO Ariane Gorin spoke about the AI opportunity and its work with AI platforms during the company's earnings call. She said that while volume remains small, the company is learning about evolving consumer behavior and maintaining its brands' visibility from the integrations. 

“These learnings, coupled with insights from our own brands, are in turn informing the development of AI experiences in our own products. And that's important because while third-party AI experiences are a new way to attract travelers and turn them into loyal members, our biggest long-term opportunity remains direct engagement.”

She reiterated that two thirds of bookings to its brands come from direct channels and that direct business is growing faster than indirect business.

In Q4, sales and marketing expenses totaled $1.7 billion, a 10% increase year over year. However, the company said that in its B2C business direct sales and marketing spend was down 5%, offset by a commissions-related increase in B2B investment.

Gorin added that the group is taking a “more disciplined and data-driven approach” to marketing.

Reinvestment

Airbnb also saw sales and marketing costs increase to $2.6 billion in 2025, up from $2.1 billion in 2024. The company has progressed from a marketing investment of $1.5 billion in 2022 to $1.8 billion in 2023.

Airbnb did not talk much about marketing in its earnings except it say that it continues to “drive efficiencies in our platform,” which will mostly be reinvested in marketing, product and technology. 

The accommodation platform doesn’t yet have a loyalty program, although there has been talk of one. On the Q4 call, CEO Brian Chesky said loyalty could be a “massive accelerant” for the company, adding that it is looking into it.

“I have said before that if you do a loyalty program, you would not want to do an out-of-the-tube program,” he said. “We want to [do something] much more unique. And we are actually testing a lot of different tracks. So we are testing different benefits that could be in a loyalty program. And based on results of those tests, we will eventually package them and release a loyalty program.”

And finally, China-based OTA Trip.com Group invested $2.1 billion in marketing in 2025, up 25% year over year. The company attributed the increase to a rise in promotional activity and its international expansion.

While the company reduced its investment to $616 million in 2022, down from $772 million in 2021, it has upped spend progressively since. Its 2023 investment hit $1.3 billion, bringing it back to prepandemic levels. Last year’s figure was $1.6 billion.