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      Booking.com

      Part of Booking Holdings

      Engaged Employer

      Booking.com reviews

      4.1

      80% would recommend to a friend

      (7,608 total reviews)
      avatar

      Glenn Fogel

      70% approve of CEO

      67% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      4.4

      Diversity & inclusion

      4.2

      Work/Life balance

      4.2

      Compensation and benefits

      4.1

      Culture & values

      3.5

      Senior management

      3.5

      Career opportunities

      Booking.com has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 7,608 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Booking.com employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

      Ratings by demographic groups

      Reviews by job title

      8K reviews
      2.0
      Mar 24, 2018

      Some good but a lot very bad, we are constantly putting out fires

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      My fellow colleagues are great, its what keeps me going in. Our engineering function seems to have a real sense of community with a properly thought out and achievable career progression structure. Some of the management in engineering are great but sometimes fall victim to the constant changing priorities in the business. Pretty open working environment where people for the most part speak their mind - even if if we don't get listened to. Staff in the contact centre are actually treated like people, which is great. I've seen many places where they're just employee numbers to be moved about. Nice offices and in the centre of the city, some of the rooms are a bit rubbish to actually use due to rubbish furniture but most rooms have audio & video, a conference phone, writeable walls and whiteboard pens. Relatively open environment where everyone knows whats going on in the business - if we're ahead or behind. We have quarterly get togethers as as business to see its performance and we're given opportunity to ask hard hitting questions which our directors will answer. Free beer on a Fridays once a month if thats your kind of thing. We support local tech community meetups, I think we're hosting maybe 5 on a regular basis now and people keep adding more. For the majority it isn't really a place where you'll be working for more than 40 hours a week (but that depends on the area).

      Cons

      The product area in the business is completely broken. I can see that most people in that area of product are unhappy and stressed out, whether you are a UX Designer, Insight Analyst or Product Owner. This is mostly down to the constant crunch management style. If you are currently the one in focus you very much feel it. We never really celebrate success and as soon as we have a win, its straight onto the next fire we have to put out. Pointless meetings that have mandatory attendance - our community is massive now and they are often a waste of time. Conflicting targets and priorities, engineering might have some goals one quarter and product might have another. This not only causes internal conflict within the product teams themselves but conflict between teams. Its very hard to collaborate and push the BookingGo strategy when there is so much conflict in goals. Whilst i have a great relationship with my colleagues in my product team, as a community its becoming toxic. There isn't a "we're doing this for the company" vibe, its all "we're doing this to meet our own targets and get people off our back"' workplace. A lot of autonomy has been removed from the teams. You are often asked to do something and then asked again, and again, and again until you do it with no opportunity to discuss it. Management say they don't tell you what to do, but they handle things in such a way that it becomes next to impossible not to do it. Completely shifting goals - what is important in the business at this moment in time might be gazumped by something else within a matter of weeks. This means it makes it very difficult to actually deliver anything of value, or expected growth of certain teams doesn't happen. Some teams have lost out on backfils for people who have left because of those priority changes but are still expected to deliver those really stretching results. We focus way too much on short term wins instead of strategic long time opportunities. This is starting to change somewhat as we've broken our into ground transport - but the bread and butter of the business is short term rewards. I don't actually feel like i've delivered much value during my time in the business vs other places I have worked out. Seems to be a real variance in people who are stretched and people who aren't. I regular work 50 hour weeks with meetings booked in until 6pm, yet other areas in the business definitely aren't feeling this pressure.

      avatar
      Booking.com Response
      8y
      Hi and thank you for your feedback it is genuinely appreciated. Whilst I am clearly disappointed by your rating and some of the things you have said, I have to say thank you for the consideration and thought that you have given this review, it really is useful and thought provoking feedback so thank you, really thank you. You cover a lot of issues here and I don't intend to respond point by point but I think I would like to reply more generally if that's ok. To your advice to us, we definitely do not want to be a business that burns people out, 100% not. We do want to be (and I'm sure we will be) a long standing colleague focussed business that delivers amazing product that changes the way customers travel. You will have heard me speak at many all colleague updates and I can assure you that as a Leadership Team we are committed to becoming a truly amazing place to work, if you doubt that please do note that it's a business level OKR for us and I suspect always will be. Having said that, we are learning as an LT and as an organisation and we still have lots to learn. Last year we didn't get the cascade of OKRs right and that did lead to some targets changing which I appreciate must have been confusing / disheartening. We are also transitioning from what has always been a top down organisation to one where we want teams to own their own ambitions and targets but this is a culture shift that takes time to adjust to. As a reminder we only fully restructured into a Product Group structure 18 months ago. The progress we have made has been awesome but we are still learning. I hope from some of the meetings and updates we've held over the last couple of weeks you can see the learning turning into action. I think it is also important to point out that we are a commercial, ecommerce business, part of the 3rd largest ecommerce business in the world that is highly profitable (a lot of tech companies aren't). We are a trading business and as such we have to react to trading conditions and that will always create some tension between "hitting the numbers" and achieving long term world changing goals. That's just the nature of what we do. If we don't keep the fly wheel turning, there will not be the investment available to achieve the huge ambition we have to transform our customer's experience. Finally with regards to too many meetings, you raise an interesting point that since you posted this review has created a lot of discussion a lot of it at LT level 👍. For what it's worth, in my opinion if at the end of a meeting you think "what was that all about" then we have failed. Having said that, communication and alignment is important and in an Agile world of stand ups and retrospectives there are a lot of "meetings" although I suspect that's not what you mean 😉. Watch this space but I would also say to anyone in our business if there is poor meeting practise happening let's call it out we all have a responsibility to help facilitate this change. Thanks again this has been one of the most thought provoking reviews we have had. I hope we can build on the amazing Pros that you identified. All the best Ryan
      1.0
      Mar 9, 2018

      Good at face value, cracks below the surface

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      - Headlines attract a lot of people i.e. free breakfast, perkbox, competitive salary's etc. - Product and engineering organisations generally run well and you are given a lot of autonomy around decision making.

      Cons

      The 'basic' benefits that bigger corporates have been doing for years simply do not exist. Sick pay, for instance, you don't get paid for the first 3 days and then it is capped at a maximum of 10 days of paid sick leave for the year. This encourages a culture of coming in sick, which is exacerbated hugely by the air-conditioned offices. No real benefit that rewards loyalty within the company

      avatar
      Booking.com Response
      8y
      Hi and thank you for your feedback although I am clearly disappointed by your rating. Your feedback is very benefits focussed rather than what a great place we are to work, how you can develop your career in a fast growing financially successful business and the potential for learning and development. However, your feedback is useful. We have dramatically improved our terms and conditions over the last 3 years. So things like salary, Perkbox and free / discounted food are important and I'm glad you recognise this. With regards to sick pay, we have had this feedback for a while and are working on this as we speak. Our holiday benefit is competitive and our pension is not lagging behind the market. We match employee contributions up to 6%. I'm sure you'll find organisations that offer more but I can show you plenty that offer less as well. We are entering the pay review time of year, let me know what you think after that. Thanks Ryan
      3.0
      Feb 13, 2018

      Going backwards & about to be swallowed up into Booking.com

      Product
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      - According to some it has been a great place to work and develop for years. - Personal development and benefits are taking higher priority than ever before - Booking.com investment / involvement could offer great opportunities and experiences. - Some great people who still care

      Cons

      - Promotions based on promises and prayers rather than achievements / skills. - Culture has taken a big hit recently with losing longer term employees. - Departmental communication is awful within certain areas (specifically Product). - LT members aren't able to recite the company values, let alone live by them. - Career paths have been drafted and shared, but the business has ignored those that didn't automatically fit on the new path. With no alignment to existing roles how can they develop / progress? - Targets are unbelievable and not achievable. The teams apparently set their own targets (but these aren't agreed until high enough). Gone has the days of the carrot, welcome to the days of the pointy stick - Lack of consistency, LT members saying one thing then expecting another.

      avatar
      Booking.com Response
      8y
      Hi and thanks for your review, whilst I am disappointed in some of the things you have said, I welcome your feedback. As you are from within the product organisation, you will know that we have recently completed a pulse survey across your team to see how you and your colleagues are feeling and flush out some of these issues. For example, we know that there has been some noise around the brand new competency framework and career paths that we have launched (which you have referred to). To be honest, this is the first time we have had the clarity of this structure and the aim is to provide more transparency and more opportunity for people to develop their careers and understand their development areas. This is in fact the absolute opposite of promotions based on promises and prayers! I think the structure and process is good and will actually alleviate many of the concerns you have raised. Having said the above, I would also say it is true that this year we have really mucked up the communication around this process. The intent was nothing but good, but we did not do a good enough job across the team of explaining what was happening and how it was working. I can only apologise for this and assure you that we have recognised this and already held a retrospective to see what we can learn and how we can do it better going forward. As I say I think the actual framework and process is good. So we will fix that. This weekend, I shall be reading the results of the pulse survey and over the next couple of weeks, will be working with the Product team leadership and you will see the results but more importantly what we have planned to respond. I would welcome your thoughts once we've done that. I do agree that learning and development has really moved forward this year and I hope you enjoy the LinkedIn learning platform that we launched yesterday. My aspiration is that we can show you that we are a great place to work. All the best Ryan
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