Booking.com reviews

4.1

80% would recommend to a friend

(7,584 total reviews)
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Glenn Fogel

71% approve of CEO

68% positive business outlook

Booking.com has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 7,584 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).

Reviews by job title

8K reviews
1.0
Jan 3, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Learn about scale and challenges Great brand name Good relocation rewards to Amsterdam as developer Lots of very good talented people around

Cons

If you are coming from a flexible tech companies prepare to hate this place in a few months. It used a great place to work but all the management is changed and now it a full of non techies running the show. Expect things like super strict work timings, 8 hours excluding lunch hours. Working from home is a luxury only available when your house is on fire or be prepared to be scrutinized. They don’t believe in people doing their best work at different hours. Very tight on these as of end of year 2017 and made it super hard to work. You will find many of your colleagues complaining and planning to leaving soon. mostly micro management from middle management is driving this place to the ground. Soon this is turning from tech company to an online sales front. There are no such thing as perks for working here. The bonus is heavily dependent on you reviews and this is controlled by the manager in your team, so guess how that goes if you step on the wrong toe or stand for your rights! Not even lunch is free, it’s from your salary! The tech stack is not something I want to get into, read other reviews. The pay isn’t competitive in any way with companies of the same scale. Tax is huge if you don’t get 30percent ruling. Even then there are taxes on house you rent and many others not mentioned anywhere. It’s upwards of 150EUR each bill you get from your first pay check. You DONT get insurance from Booking.com so expect to pay minimum 100 EURO per person in your family. This price increases exponentially with benefits you add like dental, maternity etc. Also expect at least 350 EUR needs to be covered by you every year even if you have insurance on your medical bill.

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Booking.com Response
8y
Thank you for taking the time to tell us what you like about working at Booking.com as well as letting us know where we could do better. We're sorry to hear that you wouldn't recommend us as things stand but we hope that you will be patient with us as we learn and improve because we would love to change your mind. We agree with you that we have lots of talented people operating on a big global scale and with lots of exciting challenges to tackle together. We're very proud also of the Booking.com brand that we have built together so thank you. However, we know that to continue to succeed we need to put as much effort into continuously improving our employee experience as we do our product. We know that for many developers, having flexibility about how and where you work is important and we take this feedback seriously. This is certainly not a closed conversation and we are always open to hearing from our tech and wider Booking.com community about alternative ways of working. That said, we also value close collaboration and teamwork so we strive to strike a balance between individual preference and what's right for the team. There's not an easy answer here but we value the ongoing input of you and your colleagues on this topic. Thank you also for sharing your perspective on the cost of living in Amsterdam as well as on our compensation package. We know that there are many unknowns when you relocate to a new country and we try to make crucial areas like taxes and healthcare as transparent as possible in the guidance provided by our recruiters and our relocation team. If you feel there is more we could do in this area, we would love your input. As you may know we have also done extensive work recently on benchmarking and adjusting our compensation package where needed to ensure that it is competitive which we hope will also be of help. As always, please feel free to continue to let us know how we can improve the experience for you and your colleagues. Many thanks, The People Team at Booking.com
1.0
Nov 4, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The annual conference/party in Amsterdam is a nice perk. Trainings are fun as you get to meet new people from other parts of North America. My new hires training was top notch and very professional, best I have ever had in my career, but it has been eliminated and now done locally with managers who have no clue how to train and be mentors. Snacks and Freaky Fridays were fun, but if you do not participate you are not a "team player". Hours are standard (9-5 M-F) but this is just another job. If you have invested $$ into your education and looking for a meaningful career this is not the right place for you.

Cons

Where do I start? - Local talent is not valued. People are hired from other offices and let them work even before their work visa gets approved. The reviews below are 100% accurate about the language issue! It is very uncomfortable when a couple of the people in the office sit together at a desk and speak in another language for hours on (esp when the higher up isn't there). They can't be talking about work the whole time! - Compensation is embarrassingly very low. Apparently salaries are re-evaluated often to make sure it is competitive to the market, but it's a complete lie. Bonus structure keeps getting worse and the easier it gets to reach targets the more difficult they make it to reach next quarter. - Management encourages you to speak up and ask questions, but when you do, they yell at you and tell you to figure it out on your own. Or you are harassed and bullied to the point where they chase you out the door. Or you are threatened to be put on a "personal improvement plan". Don't speak up in meetings, especially with HR there, or you're on the chopping block! - The office is a call centre. Every second of your time is micromanaged. Every call and e-mail is monitored and tracked closely. You are not recognized for your projects, creativity or innovativeness - only the number and length of calls you make. You are not trusted. This is a known complaint, so management decided to give everyone an expert role with unreachable KPIs and expectations with no increase in merit/pay. It also lead to even more tracking via google docs. Sometimes tracking would take over an hour and then we're asked what are we doing with our time when we're not making calls? - The company tries hard to brainwash you. There are so many juices and snacks in the office I'm surprised they don't give you free blue Kool-Aid to force down your throat! Quarterly meetings, visits by upper management and BAM keeps reminding us of how fast the company is growing and how they are going to be the best in the world. Don't fall for it, their competitors will always win. - Management/seniors are very unprofessional, amateur and power hungry. Instead of telling us what we are not doing, look at how you are viewed by others in the office. Lead by example or you will never be respected. Managers are nit-picky, emotional and do not value your personal development (only their own). They don't like people who are more educated and smarter than them. They get a kick out of putting employees down and the more miserable you are the happier they get. - The list of cons can go on forever. Just look at the previous reviews, they are 100% accurate. Any review you see 2 stars and over is probably written by management to increase the overall score.

2.0
Jul 2, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Alot of training in fun places. I was able to travel to several different major cities and meet great new people -Nice offices -opportunity to go to amsterdam 1-2 times a year depending on your level

Cons

unfortunately their are quite a few -The pay is incredible low compared to the industry and competitors.Most of the trainings I went to with other employees we continually talked about how we could be making substantially more at the major competitor -Mid level manager are absolutely terrible. I was overachieving all targets which is incredibly rare and was scolded multiple times about not making enough outbound phone calls. -All you can offer to your "partners" is more discounts or the option to pay more. With the current state of the hotel industry this is the last thing they want to do. The company/all OTA's are in a very turbulent time and I would not want to be around one in the next 5 years -Their really isn't much career growth here. They tell you everything is flat so their are no many steps to the top. Thats not what young professionals want to hear who want to climb the ladder. Company has a lot of side steps not steps up -Also travel benefit is terrible for a travel company. Half of the employees do not use it as they still have connections to old hotel chains and can get better rates. -Way to many accounts are given to certain account managers. The expectation is that you talk to all of your top accounts once a quarter. This is impossible when you have over 850. as many of these accounts have not been talked to and once you do they will always want contact. -Finally, they constantly ask for feedback but never want to hear it. We address many of these points in a engagement survey. When these point were brought up management turned it back around on us instead of communicating up the ladder of how it could be improved.

Viewing 67 - 69 of 7,584 Reviews

Glassdoor has 9,126 Booking.com reviews submitted anonymously by Booking.com employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Booking.com is right for you.