Should You Be Worried About Booking Holdings Stock?
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For investors holding Booking Holdings (BKNG), the rise of AI assistants raises questions about the future of a business built on helping travelers find accommodations. Travelers are still booking more for now, with room nights rising 7% in the third quarter of 2026, up from 5% in the second. Yet a sharper form of that worry surfaced on Booking’s November 3 earnings call. What is that worry, and how far has it reached?
Image from PixabayCould Travelers Book Through AI Instead Of Booking?
This scenario could unfold if AI agents that plan and book trips direct users to hotel websites instead of online travel agencies like Booking. Should this happen at scale, a traveler could secure a room without ever opening Booking.com.
So far, AI remains a small channel for Booking. Management said referrals from AI chatbots still bring in well under 1% of Booking.com’s room nights. Booking is also working with OpenAI, expanding paid referrals into more markets.
How Much Of Booking’s Business Could AI Reach?
In principle, the worry extends to the entire $28.1 billion of revenue Booking reported over the twelve months to September 2026, as the issue centers on how travelers discover the platform in the first place. That revenue figure climbed 8.0% from a year earlier, a slower pace than the 13.0% growth recorded over the preceding twelve months. For the third quarter, reported revenue was 1.3% below a year earlier, reflecting a $900 million reduction tied to a pending FTC matter at Priceline, while management put adjusted revenue, its own measure, up 9%.
Travelers still come straight to Booking, however. The share of its consumer room nights booked directly held steady in the mid-60% range over the past four quarters. At the same time, the mobile app’s share of room nights increased to the high-50% range, up from the mid-50% range a year earlier.
Booking.com also does not depend on major hotel chains. Independent hotels and alternative accommodation partners generate the vast majority of its room nights, and the ten largest global hotel chains account for only a low double-digit percentage. On the call, management said partners pay nothing unless a guest books, and that it believes Booking holds an advantage. The company has also launched its own AI travel agent, Vayo, backed by a planned $100 million investment.
Management cannot yet say how fast AI agents will catch on. It said referrals from AI chatbots have picked up over the last several weeks, and also noted that the rules on personal data and payments are complex. It added that these agents may spread much more slowly than expected in parts of the world, and that it does not know what that will mean for Booking itself.
Booking Stock Trades Near Its Lowest Multiple Since 2016
Booking stock currently trades at 17.6 times its last twelve months of earnings, compared with 22.9 for the S&P 500. At the end of September 2026, shares traded at 17.0 times those earnings. Across the 40 quarter ends from December 2016 to September 2026, the stock traded below that 17.0 multiple only once, in March 2020. Over the past year, Booking lost 14.7% including dividends, while the S&P 500 returned 9.9%. The price appears to assume some slowing already. Management expects fourth-quarter room nights to grow between 1% and 3%, citing the toughest prior-year comparison of 2026 and uncertainty around recent events’ impact on travel demand.
The stock has also experienced deep declines during past market shocks. During the 2022 inflation shock, Booking fell 34% at its worst, against a 24% drop for the S&P 500. In the 2025 tariff shock, the stock’s 18% fall remained close to the index’s 19% decline.
Shocks like these will come again. The question is how to invest so you’re fine either way.
The AI threat to Booking looks real but slow for now: AI chatbots remain a small source of its bookings so far, and most of its consumer room nights still come directly to the platform. For the risk to be worth taking, travelers need to keep visiting Booking directly rather than routing through an AI agent. The share of room nights travelers book directly with Booking is the number to watch when the company reports fourth-quarter results, expected in February 2027.
Beyond BKNG: A Systematic Way To Invest
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