“Starting with revenue as a percentage of gross bookings, we expect this to be higher in 2022 than it was in 2021 but lower than in 2019.”

In context

“opportunity in front of us, we plan to invest in marketing other incentives and improvements and expansion of our products to attract existing and new customers to our platforms and to drive additional loyalty in the future. This also requires investments in people and technology. We're excited about the opportunity to expand our business and we believe we can strengthen our position in accommodations and build a much more complete travel solution for our customers and partners. We believe this is the right thing to do for higher longer-term returns from our business. With this in mind, there are a few factors to consider when thinking about shape of the P&L for the full year. These fall into four buckets; revenue, marketing, sales and other expenses and our more fixed operating expenses. Starting with revenue as a percentage of gross bookings, we expect this to be higher in 2022 than it was in 2021 but lower than in 2019. In 2021, our revenue as a percentage of gross bookings was about 130 basis points lower than 2019, mainly due to timing differences between the recovery of gross bookings and revenue. In 2022, we expect this timing to be less of an impact than it was in 2021. Moving to marketing; there are a number of factors that come into play. We expect the environment to remain competitive, especially as the leisure travel market moves closer towards full recovery. We intend to remain disciplined in our performance marketing ROIs and we'll continue to invest in developing the medium intent social media channels and you'll see us active in branding in the U.S. and other major markets. Our goal continues to be to use our marketing strength to gain share in markets where we can with reasonable returns. W”