What Could Lift Booking Holdings Stock?
Shares of Booking Holdings (BKNG) have lost 17.2% over the past year, lagging the S&P 500 and its 17.4% return. Following that decline, the stock trades at 17.3 times earnings. That multiple sits below the company’s average of 28.3 over its last 12 fiscal quarter ends. A lower P/E means paying less for each dollar of profit, but that discount only pays off if the profit keeps growing. So what would have to go right for Booking Holdings stock to climb from here?
Booking Holdings Would Gain Most From Selling More Travel
Selling more travel would generate most of the stock’s potential gain. Under Trefis’s three-year scenario, higher revenue accounts for 82.4% of the upside. That means more room nights, the nights travelers book through platforms like Booking.com, alongside more flight and attraction tickets. Following these assumptions, the stock would appreciate about 49% in three years, excluding dividends.
The table compares Booking Holdings today against the scenario three years out.
| Today | In three years (scenario) | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $28.2 billion | $39.2 billion |
| Net margin | 25.5% | 24.4% |
| Earnings | $7.21 billion | $9.59 billion |
| P/E | 17.3 | 19.4 |
| Share price | $162.60 | $242.21 |
An expanding multiple provides a further 28.4% of the upside, assuming a higher P/E, while a lower margin takes 10.8% back. This scenario lifts the P/E from 17.3 to 19.4. Even after that increase, the multiple would remain below the stock’s own 12-quarter average of 28.3.
Where Booking Holdings’ Sales Growth Comes From
The scenario models revenue growth of 11.6% a year. That pace falls slightly behind the 12.9% Booking Holdings delivered over the twelve months to fiscal Q2 2026. Growth slowed in the latest quarter, so the scenario needs the pace to pick up again as travelers book more nights and more of the rest of their trips through the company’s sites. Room nights increased 5% and revenue rose 8% in fiscal Q2 2026, management said on the August 4, 2026 call. Executives issued a slower guide for the following period, forecasting fiscal Q3 2026 revenue growth of 4% to 6%. However, that guidance covers a single quarter rather than three years, and it assumes the conflict in the Middle East keeps weighing on long-haul travel.
Booking Holdings is also capturing more business from its most loyal customers. Members of its Genius levels 2 and 3 accounted for more than 30% of active customers in fiscal Q2 2026, representing an increase from a year earlier. Management also said that trips combining several bookings grew more than twice as fast as total transactions at Booking.com.
How Booking Holdings’ Upside Changes Under Other Scenarios
Each row below alters one assumption while keeping the other two from the scenario.
| If instead | Upside |
|---|---|
| Nothing changes (the scenario) | 49.0% |
| Revenue growth of 9.6% a year instead of 11.6% | 41.1% |
| Net margin of 21.9% in year three instead of 24.4% | 33.6% |
| P/E of 17.3 in year three instead of 19.4 | 33.0% |
| 5 years at the same assumptions instead of 3 | 85.4% |
The scenario already trims the net margin, because Booking Holdings currently operates at a margin above its average for the twelve quarter ends from fiscal Q2 2023 to fiscal Q1 2026. That lower margin gives back about a tenth of the gain.
Holding the stock for three years would return nothing under these assumptions if revenue shrank 2.3% a year, against the 12.9% growth Booking Holdings delivered in the twelve months to fiscal Q2 2026. The investment would also return nothing if the net margin fell to 16.4% in year three, compared to 25.5% over those twelve months. The same holds true if the P/E dropped to 13.0, against 17.3 today.
Growth in room nights is the measure to watch in the company’s fiscal Q3 2026 report, expected on or around November 3, 2026.
How To Act On BKNG?
Not necessarily on Booking Holdings alone, if your goal is long-term wealth. Wealth is built by owning the companies that keep outperforming, the leaders of their industries, wherever they are. Here are two companies from Booking Holdings’ own industry that have beaten it. Over the five years to October 2026, Royal Caribbean stock rose 245% and Lindblad Expeditions stock rose 131%, while Booking Holdings stock rose 69%.
Finding companies like these takes comparison across industries and sectors, and that is what the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio does. It holds 30 quality companies in equal weight and, since its inception in September 2020, has returned more than 105%, ahead of a benchmark that combines the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap and Russell 2000. See how we find the leaders.
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