“We expect IT expenses to increase year-over-year at a similar rate to what we saw in Q2.”

In context

“keting expense as a percentage of gross bookings will be slightly above Q3 2019 as we expect to invest in capturing demand and increasing awareness during the peak travel season. We expect Q3 sales and other expense as a percentage of gross bookings to be about 40 basis points higher than it was in Q3 2021 due to higher gross booking mix and higher third-party call center costs, including the impact of our partnership with Majorelle. We expect our more fixed expenses in aggregate will be about 20% higher than Q3 2021 with personnel up about 10% and both G&A and IT up meaningfully versus Q3 of last year. The year-on-year increase in G&A is driven by higher dual sales taxes, which are tied to revenue as well as increased personnel-related expenses due to return to a hybrid work environment. We expect IT expenses to increase year-over-year at a similar rate to what we saw in Q2. Taking all this into account, we would expect Q3 adjusted EBITDA to be slightly above Q3 2019. As I noted for Q2, the comparison of our Q3 EBITDA expectations to Q3 2019 is negatively impacted by changes in FX rates. At current exchange rates, we expect that our FX-neutral Q3 EBITDA growth versus 2019 will be about 15 percentage points higher than our expectation on a reported basis. We know there is a lot of interest in what will happen beyond the summer. Booking.com’s gross bookings for the Q4 travel period are over 15% higher than they were at this time in 2019 but with a high percentage of cancelable bookings. The booking window is still shorter than it was in 2019, which reduces the amount of gross bookings that we expect on the books for Q4 at this time. The shorter booking window l”