Booking.com’s Q3 2025 results leave little room for debate: alternative accommodations weren’t just part of the story; they were the story. Homes, apartments, and unique stays once again grew faster than hotels, lifted by rising U.S. demand, a surge in Asia, and cross-border travelers who clearly haven’t lost their appetite for space and flexibility.
If you’ve been watching Booking.com’s results this year, this shouldn’t be surprising. But Q3 is the quarter where everything clicked into place.
Long Game Paying Off: Booking’s AA Infrastructure Was Built Before the Boom
Booking.com didn’t “discover” vacation rentals in 2025. It simply hit the point where its long-term investments started compounding.
Hotels forced Booking to build industrial-strength infrastructure. That hotel-grade machinery includes:
- live availability feeds
- deep channel manager integrations
- consistent content and listing structures
- multilingual partner teams
- reliable multi-currency payouts
- detailed review systems
- rate and merchandizing tools
When Booking leaned harder into alternative accommodation, it didn’t need a reinvention. It just plugged a new category into a system built to absorb millions of rooms across dozens of verticals.
Airbnb and Vrbo also onboard professional managers well today. But they built those tools inside one vertical. Booking built them across many : hotels, guesthouses, hostels, aparthotels. And that multi-vertical DNA made scaling alternative accommodations faster and smoother.
It’s not that Booking had better systems. It had broader systems, and AA slotted in perfectly.
The Multi-Quarter Story: Three Signals, One Direction
This year’s AA momentum can’t be chalked up to seasonality or a quirk in travel patterns. The pattern is too consistent.
Q1: A Strong Start With a Wider Base
AA made up 37% of Booking’s room nights with 12% YoY growth, driven by early European travel, long-haul normalization, and a solid North American base. Supply crossed 8.1 million.
Q2: Growth Even As Hotels Accelerated
Hotels picked up in Q2, yet AA didn’t slow down. It still delivered 35% of room nights and nearly 10% YoY growth. Travelers leaned into hybrid work, long weekends, and warm-weather holidays.
Q3: The Trend Becomes unmistakable
AA listings hit 8.6 million, room nights grew double digits again, and Booking said demand looked “healthy across every region.”
So What Drove Q3? Asia, the U.S., and Cross-Border Travelers
Asia Roared Back
Asia was the standout performer this quarter:
- more cross-border trips
- reopened outbound corridors
- high family and group travel
- Agoda’s supply depth pulling heavy weight
These are perfect conditions for vacation rentals.
The U.S. Finally Showed Up in a Big Way
For more than a decade, Booking has wanted a bigger U.S. footprint. In Q3, it got one:
- its Super Bowl and sports placements landed
- travelers were hunting for better value
- cleaning-fee fatigue pushed some away from Airbnb
- Vrbo’s week-long niche felt too narrow for shifting stay patterns
- regulation squeezed supply in some urban markets
And when travelers go looking for alternatives, Booking’s AA supply is waiting.
Cross-Border Travel Strengthened, Too
Europe ↔ Asia, U.S. ↔ Europe, Latin America steady — all of these flows benefit homes:
- more space
- predictability
- better value per head
- currency dynamics that stretch budgets
Booking thrives when travel is global, not local, and 2025 has been increasingly global.
Alternative Accommodations Are Becoming Booking’s Most Reliable Stabilizer
Hotels still matter enormously to Booking.com, but AA plays a very different role in the company’s financial structure. Homes cushion volatility in ways hotels often cannot.
AA absorbs shifts in traveler behavior
When budgets tighten, travelers downgrade from hotels to apartments.
When group travel rises, they shift to homes.
When long-weekend culture expands, AA fills the gaps that hotels price out.
When regulation throttles urban Airbnb supply, Booking’s blended catalog keeps search volume high.
AA attracts a wider mix of guests
Families, remote workers, couples, and multigenerational groups all gravitate toward homes for different reasons. This spreads risk across demographics and reduces reliance on specific segments.
AA strengthens direct and loyalty behavior
One of the strongest insights Booking shared this quarter is how Genius loyalty now intersects with AA. Repeat customers increasingly book homes, not just hotels. These guests:
- book more often
- cancel less
- return directly
- spend across multiple categories
Loyalty makes AA more stable, not more volatile.
And Because Booking Is Multi-Vertical, AA Gets More Entry Points
Flights → Homes
Attractions → Homes
Cars → Homes
Hotels → Homes
Airbnb and Vrbo don’t have that same routing engine yet. Booking does, and it moves demand into rentals even when travelers weren’t specifically searching for one.
The Bottom Line
Three quarters of consistent outperformance, reinforced by strong Asia momentum, better U.S. traction, and a global travel ecosystem that routes demand naturally toward homes, tell a very clear story: alternative accommodations are Booking.com’s most dependable growth engine.
And as we head into 2026, that structural role is likely to expand, not contract.
Uvika Wahi is the Editor at RSU by PriceLabs, where she leads news coverage and analysis for professional short-term rental managers. She writes on Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, regulations, and industry trends, helping managers make informed business decisions. Uvika also presents at global industry events such as SCALE, VITUR, and Direct Booking Success Summit.
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