Booking.com Plans to Lay Off Up to 25% of Workforce
August 04 2020 - 12:45PM
Dow Jones News
By Dave Sebastian
Booking Holdings Inc. said it plans to cut up to a quarter of
Booking.com's global workforce, or roughly more than 4,000 people,
and restructure the company as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to
batter travel demand.
The online travel agency, which also operates Kayak, OpenTable,
Priceline and Agoda, said it is in talks with works councils,
employee representatives and relevant organizations as it decides
on the timing, number of affected employees and other parts of the
cost-reduction measures. The Booking.com unit employs more than
17,000 people, a company spokeswoman said.
The Norwalk, Conn.-based company said it expects to finalize the
plans on a country-by-country basis starting in September and send
all layoff notices by the end of the year. Booking Holdings
operates in more than 65 countries and employed more than 26,000
across its brands as of the end of last year.
"The travel industry remains under significant pressure," Glenn
Fogel, president and chief executive, told employees in a video
Tuesday. "At Booking.com this has hit, and will continue to hit,
our business hard."
Booking Holdings has also cut jobs at its other brands,
including 1,500 in Asia at Agoda in May, the spokeswoman said.
Booking Holdings derives most of its revenue from
travel-reservation commissions. In March, when lockdown measures
escalated in the U.S., the company received more cancellations than
new bookings. It is set to report second-quarter results on
Thursday, detailing the full extent of the effects of the
pandemic.
Booking's layoffs come as other travel-related sites are also
moving to cut costs to stay afloat. Tripadvisor Inc. has moved to
eliminate 900 jobs, or about a quarter of its workforce, as it
shrinks its operations.
Expedia Group Inc. last week reported a second-quarter loss as
gross bookings fell 90%, though it noted that cancellations
moderated in May and June from the troughs of April. But with some
U.S. states seeing a resurgence in Covid-19 cases, the path to
travel recovery remains uncertain.
"We will have a bouncy recovery -- there's no question," Peter
Kern, Expedia's vice chairman and chief executive, said on a
conference call last week. "We expect this not to be a linear
recovery, obviously, and we expect some bumps in the road."
Write to Dave Sebastian at dave.sebastian@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 04, 2020 12:30 ET (16:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024