The apartment next to your hotel on Booking.com stopped gaining ground
Booking.com listed 8% more apartments this year, but nights booked in them grew 4%, slower than the group's bookings overall for the second quarter running
by Markus Busch
Through 2025, the apartment was the fastest-growing product on Booking.com. In the second quarter of last year, nights booked in apartments, holiday homes, villas and B&Bs on Booking.com grew 10%, while Booking Holdings' room nights as a whole grew 8%. The company's own investor slide said it plainly: the apartments were outpacing the total.
That stopped this year.
In the first quarter of 2026, apartment nights on Booking.com grew 5.5%, against 6% for the group. In the second quarter it was 4% against 5%, according to the earnings release Booking Holdings filed on August 4. Booking.com files everything that isn't a hotel under "alternative accommodation," and that category held at about 37% of its room nights, the same share as a year earlier.
9.1 million listings, 4% more nights. Booking.com kept adding apartments all the same. Its alternative listings grew 9% to 8.8 million in the first quarter and passed 9.1 million by September, 8% more than a year before. Supply on the results page is growing about twice as fast as the nights guests book in it. For a hotel, those listings are the competition in the same search, for the same dates, on the same page.
Europe's rental growth fell from 17.8% to 5.3%. A source independent of Booking Holdings shows the same turn in Europe. Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia Group report their stays to Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, and since May an EU regulation requires them to share that activity data with public authorities. Nights booked through the three platforms grew 5.3% in the second quarter of 2026, according to Eurostat. A year earlier, the same quarter grew 17.8%. The first quarter of this year came in at 9.7%.
Booking Holdings points to the mix. The company says the gap reflects where its growth came from: Agoda, Priceline and the US, all weighted toward hotels. Domestic and regional trips also carried the quarter while long-haul travel fell back with the Middle East conflict, and nearby trips book hotels as readily as homes. Whichever reading holds, the page carries more apartments than a year ago, each booked a little less often on average.
The limits. Eurostat publishes the three platforms combined and never one on its own. Booking.com's apartment figure is global, not European. Booking Holdings compares Booking.com's apartments with room nights across the whole group, Agoda and Priceline included. Nobody has established why apartment demand slowed. Moving holidays don't explain the quarter: Easter and Whit Monday fell in the second quarter in both years.
That is the risk for your rate. An owner whose apartment sits empty more often can lower the price tonight, and the cheaper apartment then appears on the same page as your hotel, for the same dates. Most rate shoppers track a set of hotels, so it may never show up there. Search your own dates on Booking.com and look at what the apartments around you are charging.
Read also: The rental down the road can now take a booking for tonight
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