According to reports, Booking Holdings is considering laying off employees from its travel platform. The news agency Reuters claims that these possible layoffs are a component of a comprehensive study that aims to restructure the company. Booking Holdings stated in an email statement that no final decisions have been taken and that the review is still in its early phases.
This comes after the company's latest financial report revealed that operating expenses for the third quarter increased by 13.6%.
Other Booking Holdings businesses, including Priceline, Agoda, Kayak, and OpenTable, are not anticipated to be affected, despite the possibility of layoffs at Booking.com. A representative stressed that Booking.com would be the only target of the reorganisation efforts.
Nearly 23,600 people were employed by Booking Holdings at the end of 2023. The business stated in a recent statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that these changes are meant to increase agility, reduce costs, and reallocate resources to improve passenger and partner offers. “This is a difficult but necessary proactive step to keep Booking.com competitive in the fast-paced travel industry,” the company noted in the statement to Reuters.
It's still unclear how many jobs could be cut. In the SEC filing, Booking Holdings stated that additional details regarding the reorganization's timeline, effects on employees, and financial results would be given "in due course." As part of a larger organisational and technological restructure, Expedia revealed earlier this year that it was cutting 1,500 jobs worldwide, or around 9% of its staff. According to a representative for the Expedia Group, the decision was made in order to effectively allocate resources and focus important business sectors.
Although the pace of job losses is starting to slow, the computer industry has been seeing a tsunami of layoffs for a while. About 3,941 workers were impacted by layoffs at 35 tech companies in September alone.
Nissan Motor announced plans for major cost-cutting earlier this week, which included a second negative revision of its year outlook and the loss of 9,000 jobs. In a similar vein, Visa is reducing its personnel by about 1,400 workers in an attempt to simplify its international operations. It is anticipated that these cuts will be finished by year's end.
