Booking Holdings

Booking Holdings supports digital inclusion for women and girls through its Technology Playmaker awards which recognises the achievements of women in the tech sector. Women from across the world are celebrated and awarded with more than $67,000 of funding. Thorough Agoda, a subsidiary, the company supports accessibility initiatives for users with disabilities such as the Café Amazon for Chance which employs baristas with hearing disabilities.

No evidence was found of leading practices in this area.

The company demonstrates commitment towards senior level oversight for cybersecurity.

Booking Holdings supports the innovation ecosystem by sharing big data on reservations made through Booking.com, which is useful for researchers looking at travel purchase behaviour. The company also discloses the share of its women employees in tech and engineering roles.

The company could demonstrate support for universal and affordable access to digital technologies, including for users with disabilities. The company can increase transparency by disclosing the number of its employees with disabilities. Booking Holdings should also disclose how the direct economic value it creates is distributed among its stakeholders.

Booking Holdings has an opportunity to support basic, intermediate and technical digital skills training and school connectivity.

While Booking Holdings has a high-level commitment to cybersecurity, limited evidence was found of how it works to make digital technologies safe and secure. The company could better demonstrate how it monitors, remedies and reports on cybersecurity incidents, and mitigates digital risks and harms to children. In addition, it has an opportunity to implement a group-level privacy policy.

Limited evidence was found of the company contributing to open, sustainable and inclusive innovation. Booking Holdings could better demonstrate how it practises open innovation and supports ethical research and development.

Booking Holdings commits to respect human rights and has a grievance mechanism that is accessible to workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints. However, while the company has a process to identify human rights risks in its own operations, it does not have a process to identify human rights risks in its business relationships. Furthermore, the company does not disclose what its salient human rights risks are, nor does it take systematic action on a global level to address these human rights risks. However, Booking Holdings does engage with stakeholders on general human rights issues.

Booking Holdings publicly commits to respecting the health and safety of workers and places health and safety expectations on its business relationships, but does not disclose quantitative health and safety information. While the company provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by gender, and discloses that it has at least 30% women on the board, it does not report against any other indicators of diversity. Furthermore, the company has not formally committed to gender equality and women’s empowerment, and is not explicit in stating that it does not require workers to work more than the regular and overtime hours.

Booking Holdings has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints, but does not include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with suppliers. Furthermore, while the company has a policy statement setting out its approach to lobbying, it does not have a similar policy setting out its approach to political engagement nor does it specify that it does not make political contributions. Finally, while Bookings Holdings has a UK specific tax strategy, it does not have a global tax strategy and it does not disclose income tax payments for all its tax jurisdictions.

The below datasheet disaggregates scores within the three core social measurement areas and by specific indicators.