In short: Sold, and "more concerned about it today than I was when I sold it" — the most exposed large name. $8.1B of 2025 marketing (~30% of revenue) shows it pays to reach demand; the threat is a gatekeeper swap, where the traveler states intent once to an agent. The bear case "does not require Booking's volume to collapse," only that the marginal traveler be owned by another interface, so the marketing bill moves to the agent layer or shows up as a lower take rate. OpenTable (part of BKNG) is "super vulnerable" — it coordinates rather than executes.
Booking (with Kayak and OpenTable) exists to gather travel options and sort out the terms for you — exactly what agents are good at. It already spends about 30 cents of every revenue dollar on marketing, largely buying Google ads to catch travelers. If people start telling a personal agent "find me a quiet hotel under $350 with free cancellation," the agent, not Booking, owns the customer.
Booking doesn't have to lose bookings to be hurt: it could become a behind-the-scenes supplier that the agent picks from, paying the agent instead of Google or accepting a smaller cut. Unlike DoorDash, it has no fleet of drivers to fall back on. He sold it, and he's more worried now than when he did.
19:25Yet, it still spends heavily to acquire the demand. The threat to booking holdings, and the reason that I'm so worried about this company is a gatekeeper swap. Historically, a meaningful part of the online travel economics flowed through search engines. Booking paid to appear wherever travels expressed intent. In an agentic market, the traveler may express that intent once to a personal assistant.
In short: Its OpenTable unit is the demo integration he tested inside Meta's Muse: "You can connect Open Table… I asked if it could really do dinner reservations and it says yes." The agent also books restaurants "not even on Open Table with no integration" by filling out the site's own forms — an implicit disintermediation point he does not draw out. No view on Booking.
13:13So you see him first and he kind of greets you and explains how to use it. But then you have connectors. And this is where things get interesting. You can connect like your Gmail, your calendar. You can connect Open Table. This is something I did. I asked if it could really do dinner reservations and it says yes.
In short: Sold; "continues to [put up] great performance."
In short: On his list of sold holdings (with Chipotle, Apple, Intuit, Salesforce, Equifax) he expects to keep doing well — his net realized P&L on sales is +$100k.
In short: A recent addition inside the ~40-stock undervalued sleeve: "We've recently added Bookings, a company we like, Mastercard, Visa." Every one of those 40 names "has a fundamental basis to it that we like."
Booking Holdings runs Booking.com, Priceline and Kayak — an online travel marketplace that takes a commission on hotel and flight reservations without owning any hotels or planes. It is capital-light and throws off a lot of cash.
Oakley names it as a recent addition to the roughly forty diversified, fundamentally-grounded stocks that sit outside his hard-asset and energy sleeves. The common thread with Visa and Mastercard, added at the same time, is a business that collects a percentage of other people's transactions — which keeps working, and even benefits, if the price level drifts higher the way his stagflation view expects.
25:29We've recently added Bookings, a company we like, Mastercard, Visa, but we think people need a component of hard assets in their portfolio because we really feel like the next 10 years is going to be a period where you have more inflation and just look at these governments, our government and what goes on there, and I think you have to have more hard assets to offset that because we're probably going back into more of a commodity period.
In short: Built up by Dorsey; sold by Carlson, with the admiration intact. "I'm very familiar with Booking Holdings. I believe it's one of the highest quality companies in the world… very capital efficient, super profitable… they do a ton of buybacks." He exited to concentrate the portfolio and rotate into DoorDash and Uber because "Booking's already won the game, and it's already towards the end." The Google disintermediation risk he calls minor: "it just has such a big back-end… I don't believe that's going to happen."
Booking runs the hotel- and travel-reservation platforms that sit between travellers and accommodation. Carlson owned it, made good money, and sold — and he's careful that the sale wasn't a downgrade: "one of the highest quality companies in the world… very capital efficient, super profitable," with heavy buybacks.
He sold to concentrate the portfolio and because he judged the growth largely captured. Booking "has already won the game," whereas DoorDash and Uber are earlier in building the same kind of aggregation network. That's a bet on remaining runway, not a criticism.
Pat Dorsey went the other way and built it into a large position — and Carlson says he understands the buy. The one risk he names, Google inserting itself between Booking and travellers, he waves off on the strength of Booking's back-end and infrastructure.
20:44It almost looks too good." So, he's likely riding a lot of momentum with that company. He also built up Booking to a large position. Now, I'm very familiar with Booking Holdings. I believe it's one of the highest quality companies in the world. I did analysis on it to find that it was a very capital efficient, super profitable company that benefited as travel continues to grow around the globe. It went up in stock prices.
In short: Cited in the same aggregator list — a demand aggregator sitting on top of commoditized supply (hotel rooms), used as the template for what Uber becomes once AV hardware is commoditized across many suppliers.
In short: The valuation comparator in Belsky's Expedia purchase: he bought Expedia in the value portfolio in March because "it was cheaper than Booking." No stance on Booking itself.
In short: Travel holds up. Q2 revenue +8% Y/Y to $7.4B (a $160M beat) with adjusted EPS +15% to $2.54 ($0.11 beat); room nights +5% to 325 million and gross bookings +9%, both ahead of guidance — "the feared travel slowdown from the Middle East conflict was therefore less severe than expected." The conflict still lingers indirectly: elevated airfares and reduced flight capacity continue to pressure long-haul travel, with those effects now expected to persist through Q3, while the accommodation outlook was largely unchanged — "the weakness is concentrated more in flights than hotels." Higher-tier Genius members now represent more than 30% of active customers and nearly 60% of room nights, Connected Trip transactions grew low double digits, and restructuring savings were raised to ~$650M from $550M. On AI, Booking was notably restrained: traffic from LLMs is still "well below 1% of room nights" and its own AI tools remain early — optionality, not a growth driver. Q3 guided to 3–5% room-night growth with revenue, bookings and adjusted EBITDA +4–6%; FY26 still high-single-digit. "The Middle East conflict interrupted the travel cycle rather than broke it."
In short: Up 6% on earnings — the trigger for the travel discussion and for reviewing the travel names Terranova just removed from his ETF. No individual committee call on Booking itself.
In short: An owned travel name; it got hit initially on international-travel fears at the war's onset, but Oxbow keeps the downside within a reasonable range — a quality holding, not trimmed.
Booking Holdings runs Booking.com and other online travel sites. It's one of Oxbow's owned travel names. When the war started, the whole group sold off on fears people would travel less internationally.
Finucane's point is about risk management, not panic: for a holding like this you check that the hit from a new shock stays within a reasonable range, and you only take action when something gets truly extended (the way the energy names did at their spike). He held it through the volatility.
12:34So if there's oil or gas is a key input to a product of a company that we own, what's the negative hit that might be to their earnings and how much downside do we want to risk? You also have, something we noticed, we owned a few of the travel companies like Booking or Airbnb or Expedia.
In short: Black (in the EXPE case): probably the better, bigger company (2x Expedia's revenue, stronger internationally), but at 17.5x (18.8x ex-SBC) vs Expedia's 11.7x the quality advantages "don't warrant such a large differential" — he'd own EXPE instead.
In short: "A very good company," but the war bit: reported EPS +15% (fine), yet cut June-quarter revenue-growth guide to 4–6% vs 11% consensus (like United and American the prior week). Stock down on the report.
Booking (the parent of Booking.com, Priceline, Kayak) is "a very good company," and its actual results were fine — earnings up 15%. The problem is the forecast: it slashed its expected revenue growth for the coming quarter to 4–6%, versus the 11% Wall Street had penciled in, because the war is denting travel demand. United and American Airlines had cut their outlooks for the same reason a week earlier. The stock fell on the downgrade — a clean example of the war seeping into corporate guidance.
20:13Bookings, a very good company. But last week, United Airlines and American Airlines lowered 2026 guidance because of the war. This week, Bookings reported and did the same thing. The actual reported results were fine with EPS growth of 15%. However, for the June quarter, the company cut its revenue growth outlook to four to 6% versus the consensus of 11% and the stock was down on this report.
In short: Write-up #2, and the AI-fear case of the issue. Booking.com, Agoda and OpenTable take a percentage of every reservation: "they don't own any hotels. They own the traffic." A capital-light marketplace with a two-sided loop — more hotels listed brings more travellers, which brings more hotels. "Booking is currently trading at one of the lowest Forward P/E ratios we've seen since 2020. Why? Because investors fear AI will disrupt its business. We don't think this will be the case as Booking's network effect is very powerful." Guardcap 8.5%, Giverny 3.8%, AKO 3.5%.
Booking owns Booking.com, Agoda and OpenTable and takes a cut of every hotel room, flight and restaurant table booked through them. Crucially it owns no hotels — as the post puts it, "they own the traffic." That makes it capital-light: growth costs it almost nothing in buildings or equipment.
The self-reinforcing part is the two-sided loop: more hotels listed makes the site more useful to travellers, and more travellers makes the site more necessary to hotels. The stock sits at its lowest forward earnings multiple since 2020 because investors fear AI assistants will book travel directly and cut Booking out. The post's answer is simply that the network effect is too strong for that — an AI still has to find the rooms somewhere.
In short: The surprise winner of his own comparison, stated as a fact about the numbers rather than as a stance: "what I actually realized is Booking's growing the fastest off the COVID lows" on gross bookings, against Airbnb and Expedia. He gives no view on the stock and no position; the point he draws is methodological — "this is a really nice place to understand narratives and real factual numerical data."
Booking Holdings owns Booking.com and the other large online travel agencies, and it earns a commission on travel booked through its sites. Dennis holds no stated position and offers no view on the shares — it appears here purely as the answer his own data gave him.
Comparing gross bookings across the three big travel aggregators, Booking is the fastest grower off the COVID lows, ahead of Airbnb, which was the intuitive answer and the wrong one. "The data tells you otherwise."
Treat it as a lead rather than a call: a company outgrowing the peer everyone assumes is the growth story, discovered by putting three disclosed metrics on one chart. That is exactly the kind of gap between narrative and numbers he says the cross-comparison view exists to surface — and it is the point at which real research on the name would start, not end.
1:06:07metrics across all three of these main travel aggregators. And this gives me an idea of like, oh, I think Airbnb is growing the fastest, but what I actually realized is Booking's growing the fastest off the COVID lows. That is not a thesis that I would have come in with. And if you were to ask 10 people off the street, which one do you think is growing faster, the Booking.
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