“We will continue to lean into performance marketing channels at appropriate ROIs as we look to bring more customer demand to our platform during the recovery.”

In context

“nhanced Booking.com's mobile app, making it more user-friendly and easier to use. As I said before, the app is a critical platform as it allows us more opportunities to engage directly with travelers. It is also where an increasing number of bookings are happening and ultimately, we see it as the center of our connected trip experience. In 2021, Booking.com was the number one downloaded OTA app globally according to a third-party research firm. For 2022, we are increasing our efforts to enhance the app in order to build on the success we saw over the last year. In the fourth quarter and for the full year, we saw a consistently higher mix of our customers booking directly with us than in 2019 and our direct mix improved even as we leaned into performance marketing channels during the year. We will continue to lean into performance marketing channels at appropriate ROIs as we look to bring more customer demand to our platform during the recovery. In addition to performance marketing, we will be utilizing brand marketing, particularly in markets where we are looking to raise consumer awareness of our customer-facing brands. A timely example of that which I hope all of you saw two weeks ago or so, was Booking.com's first Super Bowl ad in which we reintroduced the Booking slogan to our U.S. audience. We had a great year in the U.S. in 2021 with strong growth in room night and very strong growth in gross bookings versus 2019, even though Booking.com was relatively quiet from a brand marketing perspective. We are looking to accelerate the momentum of last year's performance by layering in brand marketing that extends beyond the Super Bowl ad through the rest of the year in order to introduce Booking.com to an even broader audience. As”