“As we take an early look at demand into 2023 at Booking.com, we see strong growth in gross bookings on the books for travel that will take place in the first quarter of next year, though I note that a high percentage of these bookings are cancellable.”

In context

“recovery from a profitability perspective with the third quarter being the first time that adjusted EBITDA surpassed pre-pandemic levels. In fact, the third quarter was our highest revenue and adjusted EBITDA quarter ever. Our Q3 revenue and adjusted EBITDA were 20% and 7% higher than Q3 2019 and grew 34% and 25% on a constant currency basis. More recently, we have seen resiliency in the level of demand from travelers with room night growth improving slightly from September levels to about 12% growth estimated for the month of October versus October 2019. Gross bookings in October are estimated to be up about 30% or just over 45% on a constant currency basis. The slight improvement in October was primarily driven by the continued recovery in Asia as well as a slight improvement in Europe. As we take an early look at demand into 2023 at Booking.com, we see strong growth in gross bookings on the books for travel that will take place in the first quarter of next year, though I note that a high percentage of these bookings are cancellable. Interestingly, we have strong numbers on our books for early 2023 despite the booking window being shorter than it was at this point in 2019. David will provide further details on our results and on the recent trends we have been seeing. While there is a rising concern around the macroeconomic environment and uncertainty around the consumer spending, we believe the sustained level of demand we have seen through October helps demonstrate our consumers' strong desire to travel further. We believe our solid operating results, substantial liquidity and strong free cash flow positions us well to navigate potential near-term economic uncertainty while we continue our work attracting customers and partners to our platform and making progress on our key strategic priorities of payments and the co”