Booking Holdings said its gross travel bookings declined by 91% in the second quarter this year. Room nights booked dropped 87% during the time.
Total revenues for the second quarter of 2020 were USD 630 million, an 84% decrease from the prior year.
"We faced a challenging second quarter and continue to face challenges due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on travel demand. However, we have witnessed improvement in booking trends since April, which is encouraging" said Glenn Fogel, Chief Executive Officer of Booking Holdings. Mr. Fogel continued, "Looking forward, we continue to execute on our operating plans to navigate the Company through these challenging times and enable us to emerge from this crisis in a position of strength."
During the quarter, Booking Holdings took restructuring actions at the Agoda, KAYAK and OpenTable brands in response to the expected long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as a result incurred restructuring charges amounting to USD 34 million, primarily related to employee severance and benefits.
The restructuring actions at our agoda, KAYAK and OpenTable brands resulted in a reduction of our workforce of approximately 1,700 employees and furloughs of over 150 employees. As a result, we expect to realize annualized costs savings of approximately USD 75 million related to personnel expenses.
Booking Holdings' equity investmnet in Meituan Dianping has brought about a return of more than USD 1 billion.
In 2017, the company invested USD 450 million in preferred shares of Meituan Dianping, the leading e-commerce platform for local services in China. The investment has been converted to ordinary shares and classified as a marketable equity security since Meituan Dianping's initial public offering in 2018.
The investment had fair values of USD 1.8 billion as of June 30, 2020.
