Booking Holdings Inc. Common St BKNG

Competitive advantage analysis · consumer-cyclical

Corporate Default
Overall moat score
76/100
Strong

About Booking Holdings Inc. Common St

Booking Holdings Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides online and traditional travel and restaurant reservations and related services in the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and internationally. The company operates Booking.com, which offers online accommodation reservations; and Priceline, which provides discount travel reservations services, as well as online accommodation, flight, rental car reservation services, vacation packages, cruises, activity, … Full BKNG analysis →

Competitive advantage assessment

Key strengths

  • Margins Consistently Above Peers Gross margin at 97.2% (top 0%) and operating margin at 32.8% (top 0%) indicate strong pricing power.
  • Margins Stable Across Cycles Operating margin volatility is low (stability score 0.88), demonstrating pricing resilience across cycles.

The dashed ring is the peer median. Defense scores are percentile ranks against peers, so 50 is roughly the typical company in this group.

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Pricing Power

Strong
94

Where BKNG ranks in Travel Services

Booking Holdings Inc. Common St ranks #1 of 20 scored companies in Travel Services by moat score — the top 5%. That makes it the widest moat in the group.

Moat scores for companies ranked near BKNG in Travel Services
# Company Moat score Rating
1 Booking Holdings Inc. Common St BKNG 76/100 Strong
2 Trip.com Group Limited TCOM 70/100 Moderate
3 Travel Leisure Co. TNL 69/100 Moderate
4 Airbnb, Inc. ABNB 68/100 Moderate
5 Expedia Group, Inc. EXPE 66/100 Moderate
6 Viking Holdings Ltd VIK 62/100 Moderate
7 Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. RCL 59/100 Moderate
8 MakeMyTrip Limited MMYT 58/100 Moderate
9 Carnival Plc CUK 54/100 Moderate

See every General Corporate company ranked by moat score →

How BKNG scores on the Corporate Default defenses

Pricing Power

Score 94 · 20% of the moat score

Pricing power is the ability to raise prices without losing volume.

Cost Advantage

Score 62 · 15% of the moat score

A cost advantage means delivering the same product for structurally less — better purchasing, denser distribution, a more automated process.

Customer Stickiness

Score 94 · 15% of the moat score

Stickiness is what makes revenue repeat without being re-won every year.

Capital Efficiency

Score 60 · 18% of the moat score

Capital efficiency asks what the company earns on the money tied up in the business.

Resilience

Score 76 · 17% of the moat score

Resilience is the capacity to get through a bad year on its own terms — enough liquidity, enough interest cover, and enough cash generation to avoid a rescue financing or a forced sale.

Scale & Market Position

Score 65 · 15% of the moat score

Scale matters only when it converts into economics.

How each Corporate Default defense is measured, in full →

Understanding BKNG's moat

What is Booking Holdings Inc. Common St's moat score?

Booking Holdings Inc. Common St (BKNG) scores 76 out of 100 on the StatsAlpha Moat Map, which rates its competitive advantage as strong. It ranks #1 of 20 scored companies in Travel Services, the top 5%. The score is a weighted composite of 6 competitive defenses, each measured against industry peers of 19 companies in Travel Services. Its strongest defense is Customer Stickiness (94/100) and its weakest is Capital Efficiency (60/100).

How does Booking Holdings Inc. Common St compare with other Travel Services companies?

Booking Holdings Inc. Common St ranks #1 of 20 scored companies in Travel Services by moat score. That is the widest moat in Travel Services. The companies ranked closest are Trip.com Group Limited (TCOM) at 70 just below it.

How is the moat score calculated?

Each company is scored with an industry-specific template — Corporate Default in this case, chosen because the defenses that matter to a bank are not the ones that matter to a software company. Every defense combines several financial signals, and each signal is measured as a percentile against a peer group of 19 companies in Travel Services. The defenses are then weighted to produce the overall score out of 100.

Why is Booking Holdings Inc. Common St scored with the Corporate Default template?

Most public companies sell a product or a service at a margin, so the moat question is whether that margin survives contact with competitors. The Corporate template scores the six defenses that show up in a general operating company's financial signature: whether it can hold price, produce more cheaply than rivals, keep its customers, earn a return above its cost of capital, withstand a downturn, and turn size into economics.

Which competitive defenses are measured for Booking Holdings Inc. Common St?

The Corporate Default template measures 6 defenses, and BKNG scores: Pricing Power (94), Cost Advantage (62), Customer Stickiness (94), Capital Efficiency (60), Resilience (76), Scale & Market Position (65). Each is scored independently as a percentile against peers, so a company can be strong on one and weak on another — the overall score reflects how those defenses are weighted for this industry.

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