Booking.com Study Ties €691B in European Economic Activity to Its Platform

A new study commissioned by Booking.com credits travel demand booked through its platform with €691 billion in economic activity across Europe in 2025, a figure the company unveiled as regulatory pressure on large online travel platforms continues to build.

The research, produced with Oxford Economics, covers the EU-27 plus the UK and Switzerland. It estimates that travelers using Booking.com spent €291 billion on their trips in 2025 across hospitality, retail, transport and entertainment. Booking.com says that spending supported 4.7 million jobs and €175 billion in wages, with knock-on effects through local suppliers and cross-border trade adding close to €300 billion in further activity.

Booking.com presented the findings at VivaTech 2026 in Paris, where CEO Glenn Fogel framed the platform as a way for smaller operators to reach a global audience. The report leans on that point, arguing that independent accommodation providers and SMEs benefit most from access to international demand.

"Europe's travel economy depends not only on major destinations, but also on the ability of smaller businesses and regional economies across Europe to access travel demand," said David Goodger, managing director EMEA at Oxford Economics. He added that the measured impact extends well beyond accommodation into retail, transport, food services and entertainment.

For operators, the headline number is worth reading in context. The study was paid for by Booking.com and measures activity facilitated by its platform, a broad attribution that captures visitor spending the company did not necessarily generate on its own. Booking.com has been surfacing its economic contribution more often since the European Commission named it a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act in 2024, a designation that forces changes to how it ranks and presents listings. Research that casts the platform as an engine of jobs and SME growth is useful support in that debate.

The full report is available from Booking.com's newsroom. Operators weighing how much of their demand actually originates on the platform, rather than simply passing through it, will want to read the methodology rather than the summary.