Booking Holdings and Expedia look like a secular short with capped upside as their take rates come under pressure, though probably not within the next 60 days. As with Salesforce, the argument that they could simply run headless will be raised, and the market knows it from SaaS. Take rates should compress first where barriers to bringing inventory online are lowest; the platforms would then respond with aggressive marketing and margin dilution, extending their growth runway somewhat. x.com 

Booking Holdings sits squarely in the middle of a European summer travel nightmare and large language models' attack on online travel agencies. Its business model, exposure to the LLM threat and European exposure, given recession chances in Europe, make it the preferred travel short. x.com  x.com  x.com 

Airlines' fuel-driven fare hikes are finally cracking consumer demand. TSA checkpoint traffic is firmly negative year over year, while the airline ETF is breaking down. x.com 

Booking Holdings faces a valid long-term bear case as AI agents could take a share of the 13-18% online travel take rate. Testing Meta's Muse and Instinct for a hotel search showed them drawing on Booking and Expedia inventory for now, but agents could eventually build direct ties with long-tail hotels, better reviews and pre- and post-booking service at lower fees. OTAs' own agents look mediocre and lack users' context. At 13x 2027 EPS it tempts as a contrarian long, but looks too tough. x.com  … Show more

Booking Holdings is a great business at a nice discount and one of the best ways to play an end to the war and the reopening of the Middle East, as @vijaythirumalai argues. It is a best-in-class asset-light travel business trading at about 16x earnings with roughly 15% EPS growth and a near-10% free cash flow yield, with limited AI disruption risk, unlike Uber with autonomy. The war has created some overhang. Lower prices would be even better for the long term. x.com 

Booking Holdings' growth slowdown will accelerate as tech layoffs hit travel demand. Travel is already expensive and most spending comes from top earners, whom tech layoffs could affect. @Stock_Opine argues the Q2 guidance of 2-4% constant-currency growth mainly reflects March cancellations and that the underlying fundamentals are accelerating. x.com  x.com 

Extremely poor global sentiment and a government warning to keep cash aside for the next two to three years cloud Indian equities' recovery. It is unclear whether the market will even make a comeback anytime soon. x.com 

Expedia is underrated next to Booking and Airbnb, yet still a solid way into the travel industry. It owns a strong portfolio of brands such as Expedia and Vrbo covering every travel need, is merging onto a single tech platform that cuts costs and speeds its AI rollout, and sells its technology to banks, airlines and other businesses for steady, high-margin B2B revenue. x.com 

Indian equities look like a near-term short given dire unemployment and political turmoil in India. x.com 

Hilton is priced as if the Middle East disruption will have no lasting effect, which is a big leap of faith. The stock is near its all-time high at over 30x 2027 earnings, close to 40x including debt. The Middle East likely provides 5-7% of revenue and an outsized share of its development pipeline, while oil's jet fuel impact and regional travel demand could suffer for years after the past six months. x.com