INDEX / DIRECTORY / BOOKING.COM / ECONOMIC

Booking.com ECONOMIC

ECONOMIC AUDIT UPDATED 2026-08-11
Economic Score 6.43 /10 C Booking.com - BDS-1000 556
Economic 6.43

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Economic Audit: Booking.com

Supply Chain & Sourcing Relationships

Booking.com operates as an online travel and accommodation booking platform rather than a goods retailer or importer, and No public evidence identified of commercial relationships with Israeli agricultural aggregators or exporters such as Mehadrin, Hadiklaim, Galilee Export, or Agrexco successor entities. Source classes checked for this category - Who Profits, AFSC Investigate, SEC filings, and trade press - contain no references to agricultural or produce supply chains for this target, which is consistent with the platform’s intermediary business model 123. No public evidence identified of seasonal produce procurement patterns, as this is not applicable to the platform’s business model. No public evidence identified of third-party or indirect sourcing of Israeli-origin physical goods, again not applicable to a digital booking intermediary. The company’s Israel-facing “supply chain,” to the extent one exists, consists instead of accommodation listings sourced directly from property operators, including operators based in West Bank settlements, who are onboarded and supported by Israel-based Booking.com staff who provide training, promotional advice, and listing verification services 42.

Product Origin, Labeling & Regulatory Compliance

Human Rights Watch and Kerem Navot (20 Nov 2018) documented 26 Booking.com property listings located in West Bank settlements - including Almog, Bat Ayin, Beit Aryeh-Ofarim, Beit Horon, Giv’at Ze’ev, Har Adar, Har Bracha, Hashmona’im, Kalya, Karnei Shomron, Kfar Adumim, Kfar Etzion, Kochav Yaakov, Ma’aleh Adumim, Metsoke Dragot, Ofra, Rehelim, and Vered Yericho - finding that of the 25 properties for which land status could be determined, 16 sat on declared state land, 7 on land previously under Jordanian government administration pre-1967, and 2 on land expropriated for “public use” and later designated for exclusive Israeli civilian use 4. That same investigation found two listings, in Ma’aleh Adumim and Ofra, mislabeled at the time as located “within Israel” 4. Amnesty International’s “Destination: Occupation” report (30 Jan 2019) separately found Booking.com listing 45 hotels and rentals in settlements including East Jerusalem, and noted that, unlike Airbnb, Booking.com made no commitment to remove such listings 56. Who Profits, in data valid through November 2024, identified 24 listings across 12 West Bank settlements (including Ma’ale Adumim, Geva Binyamin, Neve Daniel, Almog, Ovnat, Shadmot Mehola, Mitzpe Shalem, Kalia, Vered Yeriho, Kfar Adumim, and Giva’at Ze’ev), 7 properties in East Jerusalem neighborhoods including Pisgat Ze’ev and Ramat Shlomo (with the Pisgat Ze’ev listings again mislabeled as “Israel”), and 152 listings across 28 settlements in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights 1. SOMO’s supplemental evidence filing (18 Dec 2024) found the number of East Jerusalem settlement listings nearly tripled, from 13 to 39, between 9 November 2023 and 9 November 2024 7; separate Dutch NGO findings cited 70 properties listed across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank between 2021 and 2023 8. Earlier AFSC/Who Profits data from 2022 had cited 19 West Bank/East Jerusalem listings and 25 Golan Heights listings, figures that rose substantially by 2024 2. On labeling practice, Booking.com changed some settlement listing location labels in 2018 from “Israel” to “Palestinian Territory, Israeli Settlement” 29, and in 2022 announced it would display a warning - reportedly worded to avoid the term “occupied” under Israeli government pressure - stating the area is “disputed, conflict-affected or high-risk” and “may pose greater risks,” appearing only in search results rather than on individual listing pages 102. No DEFRA-specific or UK/EU customs enforcement action against Booking.com was identified in this review, consistent with DEFRA’s produce-focused remit not applying to a booking platform.

Investment, Capital & Financial Exposure

Booking.com/Booking Holdings maintains an operational (rather than purely portfolio) investment in Israel through a leased machine-learning and AI research and innovation center in Tel Aviv, held through its wholly-owned subsidiary Booking.com Israel Online Hotel Reservations Ltd., with the center expanding from 2017 and later relocating to the Azrieli Sarona tower 1112131415. In March 2014, Priceline Group (Booking Holdings’ predecessor) acquired Israeli ad-tech firm Qlika Ltd. for approximately $15–20 million, which became Priceline’s first Israeli office 1617. On the ownership side, 92.42% of Booking Holdings stock is held by institutional investors led by Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street under a standard one-share-one-vote structure; no evidence identified in this review that these asset managers’ Israel-specific holdings are disclosed as attributable to Booking Holdings’ own corporate decisions 18. Harvard Management Company, an investor in but not a controlling parent of Booking Holdings, reinvested $150 million in Booking Holdings equity in Q3 2024 (a position valued at $172.5 million as of a January 2025 report) after having fully divested in March 2020; contemporaneous reporting explicitly links this reinvestment to Booking Holdings’ 2023 UN settlement-business listing as context for on-campus divestment advocacy 19. No public evidence identified of Booking Holdings or Booking.com holding Israeli sovereign bonds, Israel Bonds, or positions in Israel-focused investment funds.

Operational Presence & Market Activity

Booking.com’s Israeli physical footprint consists of a Tel Aviv office and R&D center, most recently reported in the Azrieli Sarona tower, housing engineering, machine learning, and AI innovation teams 11121314. The operating entity, Booking.com Israel Online Hotel Reservations Ltd., is formally registered with the Israeli Registrar of Companies under number 514762970, based in Tel Aviv-Yafo, confirming formal tax and regulatory registration in Israel 152. Specific current (2024–2026) headcount figures were not identified in this review; the most concrete figure available is 2017-era reporting of plans to grow the center to several dozen employees 11. On market characterization, Booking Holdings management stated on its Q4 2023 earnings call (22 Feb 2024) that Israel represented approximately 1% of global room nights on a booker-plus-inbound basis, with the broader Middle East (including Turkey and Egypt) at approximately 4% 20. The company disclosed a booking slowdown and cancellation wave beginning the second week of October 2023 following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, concentrated in Israel but with some regional spillover, while Q4 2023 global room nights still grew 9% year-over-year (11% excluding Israel) 2021. Israel-based Booking.com staff engage directly, including in person, with accommodation providers - including those operating in settlements - offering training, promotional advice, and listing verification services 42.

Corporate Structure & Foundational Ties

Booking.com was founded in Amsterdam in 1996 (originally as Bookings.nl) by Geert-Jan Bruinsma 22. Its parent, Priceline.com (later renamed Booking Holdings Inc. in 2018), was founded in the United States in 1997 by Jay Walker and acquired Booking.com in 2005 2322. Booking Holdings Inc. is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, and trades on NASDAQ as BKNG, while Booking.com B.V. is domiciled in Amsterdam, Netherlands; no dual or legacy Israeli headquarters was identified 12223. No public evidence identified of an Israeli founding origin, Israeli headquarters, Israeli state ownership stake, Israeli government board appointee, Israeli government contract, or critical-national-infrastructure designation attaching to Booking.com or Booking Holdings. Booking Holdings is reported to use a standard one-share-one-vote governance structure, with no golden shares, founder shares, or charter provisions tying the company to the Israeli state identified in this review 18. Booking Holdings does maintain an Israeli operating subsidiary, Booking.com Israel Online Hotel Reservations Ltd., registered with the Israeli Registrar of Companies, which constitutes the company’s sole confirmed corporate/foundational tie to Israel 15.

Profit Repatriation & Economic Contribution

Booking Holdings does not appear to publicly break out Israel-specific revenue in its SEC filings beyond the room-nights percentage disclosed on its Q4 2023 earnings call 203. Booking.com Israel Online Hotel Reservations Ltd. operates as a subsidiary of the Netherlands/US-domiciled parent group; consistent with this foreign-parent-to-Israeli-subsidiary ownership structure, value generated by the Tel Aviv R&D center and local booking operations would be expected to flow outward to the US/Netherlands parent entities rather than the reverse, though this is an inference from the corporate structure rather than an explicit repatriation disclosure, and no such disclosure was located 153. No public evidence identified of any Israeli government or industry-body assessment designating Booking.com’s Tel Aviv operations as a “sector anchor” or comparable economic-anchor status; local technology press covering the R&D center treats it as one of several multinational tech hubs operating in Tel Aviv without assigning it special designation 111213.

Legal, Reputational & Multilateral Accountability Context

Booking.com and parent Booking Holdings are named in the OHCHR Database of Business Enterprises maintained pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions 31/36 and 53/25; the database was updated on 26 September 2025, expanding from approximately 112 listed companies in 2020 to 158, with Booking Holdings present in both the original 2020 listing and the 2025 update 24259. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s report A/HRC/59/23 (2 July 2025), “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide,” explicitly names Booking.com alongside Airbnb, TripAdvisor, and Expedia as digital tourism platforms she characterizes as profiting from war crimes by listing settlement properties and attractions, normalizing the illegality of Israeli colonies 26. A criminal complaint was filed with the Dutch Public Prosecution Service on 8 November 2023 by the European Legal Support Center, Al-Haq, SOMO, and The Rights Forum, alleging that Booking.com’s settlement-rental revenue constitutes money laundering of the proceeds of war crimes under Dutch law, citing specific properties including “Nof Canaan” in Kfar Adumim and “Jericho Inn” in Vered Yeriho 27282930. The Dutch Public Prosecutor indicated in May 2024 an intention to investigate 27, and SOMO filed additional supporting evidence on 18 December 2024 731. As of 9 April 2026, the complainant coalition has escalated to the Dutch Court of Appeal via an Article 12 procedure alleging prolonged prosecutorial inaction, indicating the matter remains unresolved 32. Booking.com has publicly disputed the allegations, stating it “fully complies with the laws of the Dutch and American authorities” and that “there are no applicable laws that prohibit listing accommodations in Israeli settlements in the West Bank” 27. The BDS Movement maintains an active “Booking.com: Stop Profiting from War Crimes” campaign page and a “No Room for Genocide” hospitality-sector toolkit 338, which NGO Monitor characterizes as part of a broader “BDS Network” campaign 34. The University of Manchester divested more than £10 million from Booking Holdings in August 2020, citing complicity in the Israeli occupation 2. No evidence identified in this review that Booking Holdings appears by name on KLP (Norway)‘s specific exclusion list; KLP’s 2021 divestment round named 16 companies tied to Israeli settlements, but the individual company list was not confirmed in the sources reviewed 35.

End Notes

Footnotes

  1. https://www.whoprofits.org/companies/company/3768 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. https://investigate.afsc.org/company/booking-holdings ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  3. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1075531/000107553126000009/bkng-20251231.htm ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/11/20/bed-and-breakfast-stolen-land/tourist-rental-listings-west-bank-settlements ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2019/01/destination-occupation-digital-tourism-israel-illegal-settlements/ ↩

  6. https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/11/20/israel-airbnb-end-settlement-rentals ↩

  7. https://www.somo.nl/additional-evidence-filed-against-booking-com-for-profiting-from-illegal-settlements/ ↩ ↩2

  8. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/stop-booking-apartheid-targets-bookingcoms-israeli-settlement-profits ↩ ↩2

  9. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/02/israelopt-un-list-of-settlement-businesses-offers-new-hope-for-accountability/ ↩ ↩2

  10. https://www.timesofisrael.com/booking-com-to-warn-customers-that-staying-in-settlements-may-pose-greater-risks/ ↩

  11. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3736492,00.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  12. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3724932,00.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  13. https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-bookingcom-israel-development-center-moves-to-azrieli-sarona-1001232460 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  14. https://careers.booking.com/locations/tel-aviv/ ↩ ↩2

  15. https://www.northdata.com/Booking%C2%B7COM%20Israel%20Online%20Hotel%20Reservations%20Ltd%C2%B7,%20Tel%20Aviv%20-%20Yafo/ICA-514762970 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  16. https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/11/priceline-buys-israels-qlika-for-15-20m-to-boost-global-expansion-with-rocket-science-powered-ad-tech/ ↩

  17. https://nocamels.com/2014/03/qlika-acquired-by-priceline-for-20m/ ↩

  18. https://www.advisorycloud.com/blog/meet-the-board-of-directors-of-booking-holdings ↩ ↩2

  19. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/1/28/HMC-reinvests-booking-holdings/ ↩

  20. https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2024/02/22/booking-holdings-bkng-q4-2023-earnings-call-transc/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  21. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-02/booking-posts-third-quarter-beat-on-strong-summer-travel ↩

  22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking.com ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  23. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking_Holdings ↩ ↩2

  24. https://www.ohchr.org/en/business/bhr-database ↩

  25. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/26/un-lists-150-firms-tied-to-illegal-israeli-settlements ↩

  26. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session59/advance-version/a-hrc-59-23-aev.pdf ↩

  27. https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/132249-is-booking-com-profiting-from-war-crimes-in-palestine.html ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  28. https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/netherlands-csos-sue-bookingcom-for-profiting-from-israeli-settlements/ ↩

  29. https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/23156.html ↩

  30. https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/6111.html ↩

  31. https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/25821.html ↩

  32. https://elsc.support/booking-com-war-crimes-complaint/ ↩

  33. https://bdsmovement.net/bookingcom-stop-profiting-war-crimes ↩

  34. https://ngo-monitor.org/the-ngo-bds-network-targets-booking-com/ ↩

  35. https://www.timesofisrael.com/norways-largest-pension-fund-divests-from-firms-linked-to-west-bank-settlements/ ↩