The second booking: Your regular came back through Booking.com. Your system thinks she's new.

Booking.com's most frequent customers book a high-50% share of its room nights, and each of their bookings reaches you under a new email address

by Markus Busch

Booking.com counts its regulars, and it tells investors how much of its business they bring. Travelers in the top two levels of its Genius program make up just over 30% of its active customers. They book a high-50% share of its room nights. Both numbers rose over the past year, the company said on its first- and second-quarter calls in 2026, and its 2026 proxy statement to the SEC reports the same for 2025. Some of those regulars are yours.

Reaching the second level takes five stays in two years. Booking.com's chief executive, Glenn Fogel, has described what these members do next. They book more often. They cancel less. They come back more consistently, and they book directly with Booking.com, in the app or on the site, more often than other customers do.

The second booking is the one an independent should win. The guest has slept in the room, met the staff, eaten the breakfast. She needs nobody to find you again. Booking.com has built a program to keep that booking, and your hotel pays for part of it.

Five stays in two years buys a discount you fund

Genius costs the traveler nothing. The hotel pays for what she gets. A property that joins gives every Genius member at least 10% off. It can offer level 2 members up to 15% and level 3 members up to 20%, and add free breakfast or a room upgrade. Booking.com then charges its commission on the lower price.

Booking.com says the program brings hotels bookings they would not otherwise get, rather than moving demand they already had. It says Genius guests write more reviews and fill more rooms in the off-season. That is Booking.com's reading of its own data, and it has every reason to make it. More than 850,000 properties had joined by the end of September 2025.

Now look at it from the guest's side. Her tenth booking on Booking.com earns her more than her second booking with you. She doesn't have to be disloyal to you to book there. She only has to be loyal to the app.

Every booking arrives under a new address

Here is the part a hotelier rarely sees.

Booking.com does not pass on a guest's email address. For every reservation it creates a unique alias ending in @guest.booking.com and forwards messages through it. Since September 28, Booking.com reservations also arrive without a phone number, which we have covered. Booking.com gives privacy as the reason for the first and fraud for the second.

So when your Genius regular books her third stay, your system receives her name, her dates and an email address it has never seen. Email and phone are what many hotel systems match on to recognize a returning guest. She arrives with neither. Unless someone at the desk knows her face, or the system matches on name alone, she checks in as a first-time guest. The history on her real profile, the room she likes, the anniversary, the allergy she mentioned, stays where it was.

The regulars Booking.com keeps are the ones you can least see.

Direct guests came back at 5.1%, OTA guests at 1.3%

The only large count of who comes back, and how, comes from a software company. Bookboost, which sells guest messaging and CRM tools to hotels, looked at 2.2 million guests at European hotel groups between 2024 and 2026. Guests whose first booking was direct came back 5.1% of the time. Guests whose first booking came through an OTA came back 1.3% of the time. OTAs brought in 65% of first stays and 32% of repeat stays.

Bookboost doesn't say how it matched a guest's second stay to her first. If the matching relied on email addresses, an OTA guest who returned under a new alias would count as new, and the 1.3% would be too low. Either way the hotel sees the same thing on its own screen: the guests it can recognize as returning are mostly the ones who booked direct the first time.

Expedia and the chains run the same play

Booking.com is not alone. Expedia retiered One Key on July 28, paying travelers back in OneKeyCash at every tier, and Hotels.com's new business travel mode puts a one-tap rebook in front of the guest who has stayed before. Marriott says Bonvoy passed 295 million members at the end of June. Each program does the same job. It makes the second booking happen inside its own app.

The independent has no points to match that. What it has is the guest in the building for two or three nights, with nobody in between.

Count your regulars by name

Start with a number most independents have never seen. Pull your repeat guest report for the past 12 months, and check that it matches guests on name and the details collected at check-in, never on email alone. Count how many repeat guests it finds. Then count how many of those came back through Booking.com, and add up the commission you paid on their stays. That total is what you paid to host guests who already knew you.

Then cover what the system misses. Ask for the guest's real email address at the desk, where no platform sits in between, and put it on her profile by hand if the system won't keep it. Have the front desk check every Booking.com arrival against past guests by name, so she is welcomed back as a regular, and so the offer for her next stay comes from you.

Read also: Everything the OTA sends you about your guest expires

Enjoying this analysis? Hospitality.today delivers daily insights on hotel distribution, AI trends, and travel commerce — straight to your inbox. Subscribe for free at Hospitality.today →