(Bloomberg) -- Booking Holdings Inc. reported a decline of more than 85% in room nights booked in April from a year earlier, a staggering drop that reflects the extent of economic devastation the coronavirus is wreaking on the travel industry.Chief Executive Officer Glenn Fogel also said that newly booked room nights, excluding cancellations, fell 60% year-over-year in March. “This gives you a clear indication of how much our business is currently impacted by this crisis,” he said during a conference call.Booking is the first of the online travel giants to report earnings this year and its results will be held up as benchmark for its smaller rivals trying to weather the crisis.The company said the number of room night reservations dropped 43% from a year earlier in the first quarter, while Wall Street had estimated a decline of 29%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Gross travel bookings, which reflect all travel services booked by customers, came in at $12.4 billion, a 51% decrease, Norwalk, Connecticut-based Booking said Thursday in a statement. Revenue fell 19% to $2.29 billion in the period, beating the $2.15 billion projected by analysts.The pandemic has kept much of the world at home the past two months, gutting the travel industry and sparking what is likely to be the worst economic slowdown in decades. Airbnb Inc. and TripAdvisor Inc. have cut a quarter of their workforces, Expedia Group Inc.’s credit rating has been downgraded and Booking has applied for government aid.“The travel industry is down 80% to 90% -- this is the first time that has ever happened in modern times,” said Kevin Kopelman, an analyst at Cowen & Co. who has covered Booking for almost a decade.Last month, Booking said the virus would impact the current quarter “much more significantly” than the first, according to a securities filing. The company declined Thursday to provide a full second-quarter forecast, but said the results in April should provide “a clear picture of recent top line trends.”However, Booking executives said they believe travel will bounce back, albeit slowly. “It will likely be years, not quarters, before we witness a full recovery of global travel demand,” Fogel said on the call. “We believe that either a vaccine or effective treatment is needed before people will feel fully comfortable traveling the way we did before the pandemic started.”The company faces “a tough road ahead,” Fogel said. “The impact of Covid-19 is unprecedented, but we know one day we will be on the other side and we are doing everything we can to ensure we are well positioned to navigate through these challenging times.”Booking’s stock declined about 1.5% in extended trading after closing at $1,443.91 in New York. The shares have fallen 31% this year, outperforming Expedia and TripAdvisor. The company, formerly known as Priceline, reported profit excluding some costs, of $3.77 a share in the first quarter, lower than the $5.38 analysts projected.In reporting its results as scheduled, Booking has indicated “the company is further down the path of understanding and addressing the ongoing pandemic” than its rivals, according to a note by Wedbush Securities analysts. Expedia, which typically reports earnings before Booking, has delayed delivering its results until May 20.(updates with comments from CEO in the third paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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(Bloomberg) -- Expedia Group Inc. followed its peers in the online travel industry in witnessing a staggering decline in business since the spread of the coronavirus, with total gross bookings down 39% in the first quarter.The Seattle-based company reported total gross bookings of $17.89 billion, including a decline of as much as 90% in the second half of March as the pandemic took hold. Revenue fell 15% to $2.21 billion, its first quarterly drop in eight years. The adjusted loss before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was $76 million, or 1.83 a share, compared with a loss of 27 cents a year earlier. Analysts had projected a loss of $1.45 a share on $2.11 billion in sales.Chief Executive Officer Peter Kern said Expedia has seen cancellations stabilize and growth return in May as parts of the world emerge from pandemic lockdowns and people start to think about their summer holidays. One of the businesses leading the improvement is Vrbo, the company’s vacation rental unit that competes directly with Airbnb Inc.“We’ve seen a higher bounce back from Vrbo,” Kern said in an interview, including an uptick in demand from travelers renting a house within driving distance of their own homes rather than flying or booking a hotel.In March, Expedia withdrew its full-year forecast as stay-at-home orders began to halt flights and travel around the world. The company had already been struggling, cutting 3,000 jobs in February to simplify what had become a “bloated organization,” as it faced increasing pressure from Google in advertising and nimble startups such as Airbnb. As part of the company revamp, Kern, then vice chairman, took over as CEO in April. At the same time, Expedia announced it was raising $3.2 billion as the impact of the coronavirus began to weigh on the industry. In addition, the company made a “significant reduction” in costs for marketing and discretionary expenses and deferred certain capital expenditures, it said in the earnings report.“We already had pretty ambitious goals about how we would simplify and strengthen the business,” Kern said. “This creates an energy and an ambition that is hard to get when you are just in regular old fine times.” The pandemic crisis could help Expedia “turbo charge“ through some difficult changes, he said.Expedia’s shares gained about 3.7% in extended trading in New York after closing at $79.58. The stock has dropped 26% this year compared with an 8% decline of the S&P 500.As the pandemic raged in March, Expedia saw “unprecedented” cancellation volume and moved to build self-service options for customers to cancel lodging and air bookings without speaking to an agent. As a result, cancellation inquiries for air travel managed without an agent increased to more than 95% in April from 65% in February.“If there was an industry on the front lines bearing the full impact of coronavirus, I would say it’s travel,” said Naved Khan, an analyst at Suntrust Robinson Humphrey Inc. “It is one of the sectors that has been hurt the most and is likely to lag during the recovery because until there is a vaccine people will limit their travel activities.”Airbnb and TripAdvisor Inc. cut a quarter of their workforces and Booking Holdings Inc. has been forced to apply for government aid.Kern acknowledged his appointment as CEO came at a “messy time,” but said it has also provided a rare opportunity for sweeping action. “A lot of friends and business acquaintances have been like, ‘Wow, you really stepped into it in a very tough time,’” he said. “Not a lot of fun is being had, but on the other hand I see this as a crystallizing moment of change for this company.”(Updates with comments from CEO beginning in the third paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

TripAdvisor (TRIP) reports weak first-quarter results due to COVID-19-induced travel bans and the need for physical distancing.

Shares of TripAdvisor (NASDAQ: TRIP) jumped over 4% at the stock market's open on Wednesday, joining the rest of the market's continued euphoria over the reopening of the economy. Travel and hospitality businesses have been among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, but markets in the U.S. and around the globe are now coming out of the coronavirus-induced downturn. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) data shows the number of travelers going through airport checkpoints rose to 262,734 for the week ended May 23, more than any other week since March 28.

What happened Shares of TripAdvisor (NASDAQ: TRIP) were down more than 6.7% on Monday after several analysts cut their price targets on the travel-recommendation site. So what TripAdvisor reported first-quarter earnings late last week that badly missed expectations, and in what should have been an unsurprising update given the COVID-19 pandemic, it forecast the second quarter would be materially worse than the first.

Consumer-facing companies of all stripes are jumping as medical research company Moderna reported promising results in an early-stage coronavirus vaccine.

Travel stocks, including Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE), Tripadvisor (NASDAQ: TRIP), Hyatt Hotels (NYSE: H), and Marriott International (NASDAQ: MAR), were climbing today on enthusiasm about a broader economic recovery and new entrants in the race toward a vaccine. At the same time, the S&P 500 was trading 1.7% higher.

Focused approaches and strong financials mark the industry's top players Continue reading...

Daniel Yates, the founder and managing director of campsite and recreational vehicle booking site Pitchup.com in West London, UK, sounds almost incredulous when talking about Google's announced aid to small business advertisers during the coronavirus crisis. "Besides the fact that the advertising credits are chicken's feed, it's been five weeks and nobody's got anything yet," Yates […]

Here's a sneak peek into how five e-commerce stocks might fare in their upcoming quarterly results, slated to release this week.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference call over to TripAdvisor's Vice President of Investor Relations, Mr. Will Lyons. Joining me today are our CEO, Steve Kaufer, and our CFO, Ernst Teunissen.

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Tripadvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRIP) issued its first quarter 2020 earnings press release and management's prepared remarks, which are available now at ir.tripadvisor.com/events-and-presentations. These documents are also available on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. As announced previously, the company will host a conference call tomorrow, Friday, May 8, 2020 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) to discuss the results. The live audiocast and replay will be available to the public at ir.tripadvisor.com/events-and-presentations. Replays of the conference call and the webcast will be accessible for at least twelve months following the conference call.

Image source: The Motley Fool. Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: LTRPA)Q1 2020 Earnings CallMay 7, 2020, 5:00 p.m. ETContents: Prepared Remarks Questions and Answers Call Participants Prepared Remarks: OperatorLadies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by.

Q1 2020 TripAdvisor Inc Earnings Call

After listening to the Tripadvisor and Booking Holdings first quarter earnings calls over the past few hours, it's striking that despite the world-changing disruption of the coronavirus pandemic, how the CEOs of these two major travel businesses similarly argue that the underlying dynamics of the travel industry will largely remain intact when travel snaps back. […]

TripAdvisor shares slipped after a downgrade from a Deutsche Bank analyst concerned about the travel sector's collapse.

Shares of TripAdvisor (NASDAQ: TRIP) fell as the travel-recommendation company revealed its first-quarter results and management shared its thoughts on the future during a very challenging time for the travel industry . TripAdvisor's revenue plunged 26% in the quarter to $278 million, which was significantly worse than estimates at $317.1 million. Daily bookings and revenue plunged more than 90% in late March and April, showing that the travel industry has virtually disappeared while shutdown orders have been in effect.

TripAdvisor (TRIP) delivered earnings and revenue surprises of -41.67% and -3.56%, respectively, for the quarter ended March 2020. Do the numbers hold clues to what lies ahead for the stock?