Consumers have the travel bug again
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
Shares of Booking Holdings — the company behind Booking.com, Priceline, Kayak and other travel sites — are popping this morning after announcing yesterday that profits were up almost 50% last quarter compared to a year earlier. Tons of companies in the travel industry, including airlines, are doing well thanks to strong travel demand. We’ll unpack. Also on the program: a lesson on how Massachusetts helped make the modern gambling industry.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Consumers have the travel bug again for a marketplace. I'm Sabrina Banishore and for David Brancaccio. |
| 0:08.0 | Shares of booking holdings are popping this morning. Booking Holdings is the company behind booking.com, price line, kayak, a bunch of other travel and leisure sites. The company announced yesterday the profits were up almost 50% last quarter compared to a year earlier. |
| 0:22.8 | Lots of companies in the travel industry are reporting better profit margins, which is another way |
| 0:27.2 | of saying that consumers are paying more. Marketplaces Nova Sappho is here with the details. |
| 0:31.7 | Hi, Nova. Good morning, Sabree. So booking's doing well. What do we know about how other travel companies are doing? |
| 0:39.7 | Well, consumers are paying more everywhere. It's been pretty much the same story throughout |
| 0:43.0 | the travel industry. We've heard from Airbnb, Expedia, all reporting strong sales. |
| 0:48.2 | Overseas travel is doing particularly well. Travel in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region. Bookings |
| 0:53.0 | saw revenue up 14% compared to a year ago. |
| 0:56.2 | Expedia previously reported a 10% increase, Airbnb is up 12%. |
| 1:00.1 | And all of this, because households with $100,000 or more in income, which make up a vast |
| 1:06.4 | majority of travelers are still doing well in this economy, Sabri, and they want to travel. |
| 1:11.7 | How are airlines doing? |
| 1:13.9 | Well, we've heard from all the major U.S. carriers and European ones, and they're predicting |
| 1:19.2 | better results this year compared to last. And that's because of both the strong demand out |
| 1:24.4 | there and also limited capacity. Now, that's an additional issue over at the |
| 1:28.5 | airlines. They don't have enough planes. That's not changing anytime soon. Both Airbus and Boeing |
| 1:33.0 | are behind in their deliveries. The airlines also have been generally more disciplined about |
| 1:37.7 | increasing capacity this year compared to last. Last year, carriers found themselves with just |
| 1:42.8 | too many seats to sell, and all of a sudden |
| 1:44.6 | they were in a price war, and that hurt their profits. Not this time. And that means higher ticket |
| 1:50.0 | prices. People are feeling that already. By one estimate, tickets sold through travel agencies |
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