Booking Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:BKNG) just reminded the market it has not.
Shares of the world’s largest online travel agency tumbled more than 6% in pre-market trading after a 2026 guidance cut exposed how a four-month war is reshaping global booking flows.
The Norwalk-based parent of Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK and OpenTable reported first-quarter results late Tuesday that beat Wall Street estimates on every line, then cut the midpoint of its full-year 2026 outlook on the same call.
The reason: the Strait of Hormuz blockade is doing more damage to global travel flows than the headline numbers suggest.
The stock traded at $166.00 in Wednesday’s pre-market, down 6.49% from Monday’s $173.38 close. Year-to-date losses now exceed 20%.
Why Is Booking Holdings Falling Despite Strong Earnings?
The first-quarter 2026 print, on its own, was a beat.
Booking delivered 338 million room nights, gross bookings of $53.8 billion (+15% year-over-year), revenue of $5.5 billion (+16%) and adjusted EBITDA of approximately $1.3 billion (+19%).
Adjusted EPS of $1.14 grew 14%. All four metrics topped Street consensus estimates.
The problem sits underneath. “We estimate that the Middle East conflict impacted our room night and gross bookings growth by approximately 2 percentage points,” CEO Glenn Fogel said.
“Excluding this impact, we believe our room nights would have been up by approximately 8%,” he added.
March is where the damage shows.
Room night growth collapsed to 1% that month, with management estimating a six-percentage-point hit from the conflict, half from reduced new bookings, half from elevated cancellations.
“We saw an increase in cancellation rates and lower travel ...
