Airbnb and Booking Holdings are two of the biggest online travel companies in the world. They help millions of people find places to stay and things to do when they travel. In 2025, both companies showed strong business results and made progress on their climate and sustainability goals.
This article looks at how each company performed in the first quarter of 2025 and compares their efforts to cut carbon emissions and reach net-zero targets.
Airbnb: Navigating Economic Headwinds
In Q1 2025, Airbnb reported revenue of $2.3 billion, marking a 6% year-over-year increase. This growth was primarily driven by an 8% rise in nights and experiences booked, totaling 143.1 million.
However, the company faced some challenges. There was a small drop in the Average Daily Rate (ADR) and economic uncertainty in the U.S. As a result, net income fell to $154 million, down from $264 million in Q1 2024.
Adjusted earnings stood at $417 million, representing an 18% margin. Despite challenges, Airbnb still generated $1.8 billion in free cash flow. This kept their cash strong at $11.5 billion in cash and equivalents. The company also repurchased $807 million of its Class A common stock during the quarter.
Booking Holdings: Leveraging International Demand
Booking Holdings posted strong Q1 2025 results, with revenue reaching $4.8 billion, an 8% increase year-over-year. Gross bookings totaled $46.7 billion, up 7%, driven by 319 million room nights booked.
The company’s adjusted earnings rose 21% to $1.1 billion, with a margin of 22.9%. Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) came in at $24.81, surpassing analyst expectations. Free cash flow was robust at $3.2 billion, and the company returned $2.1 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends.
Both companies show strong financial performance. However, Booking Holdings leads in revenue and profit. It benefits from a diverse portfolio and a global presence. Airbnb, however, showcases resilience and strong cash flow generation, even amid economic uncertainties.
Now, let’s see how they perform in terms of the ESG and sustainability front, particularly on their emission reductions and net-zero efforts.
Airbnb: Advancing Toward Net-Zero by 2030
Airbnb aims to reach net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in its global operations by 2030. This goal includes Scopes 1, 2, and some Scope 3 categories. This commitment relies on science-based targets approved by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi).
Carbon Emission Reductions
Airbnb aims to reduce its absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 78.4% from a 2019 baseline by 2030. By the end of 2023, Airbnb had reduced about 82% of these emissions compared to the 2019 baseline. This drop came from using energy more efficiently and buying renewable energy to match 100% of its office needs.
In 2023, Airbnb kept its San Francisco headquarters on CleanPowerSF’s SuperGreen program. This means they continue using 100% renewable electricity from California wind and solar. This accounts for about 16% of their global office electricity use.
Scope 3 Emissions
About 92% of Airbnb’s total emissions come from Scope 3 sources, mostly from suppliers. Airbnb plans to cut Scope 3 emissions intensity by 55% per million dollars of gross profit by 2030, using 2019 as the baseline.
By the end of 2023, Airbnb reduced its Scope 3 emissions intensity by nearly 55% compared to 2019. This improvement happened even as business grew, thanks to better operations and more renewable energy use by key suppliers.
Supplier Engagement
In 2023, Airbnb continued its Supplier Sustainability Program, which launched in 2022. By the end of 2023, over 80 suppliers took part. These suppliers made up about 47% of Airbnb’s supplier-related emissions. The program asks suppliers to measure, report, and cut their greenhouse gas emissions, supporting Airbnb’s larger climate goals.
Carbon Offsetting and Nature-Based Solutions
Since 2021, Airbnb has invested in high-quality nature-based carbon credits. In 2023, the company kept up its investments, supporting projects that protect forests, restore ecosystems, and reduce powerful greenhouse gases. It bought 25% more credits in 2023 than the previous year.
Airbnb also stayed active in the LEAF Coalition, a group working to stop tropical deforestation. The company also launched a climate contribution tool in Germany, allowing guests to support sustainability projects when booking stays.
Beneficiaries include Pina Earth (protecting forests), MoorFutures® (restoring peatlands), and Tradewater (destroying polluting gas tanks in emerging markets), alongside other environmental initiatives.
Booking Holdings: Comprehensive Climate Action Plan
Booking Holdings aims for net-zero GHG emissions by 2040, ten years later than Airbnb. They set interim goals to cut absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 95% and Scope 3 emissions by 50% by 2030, using 2019 as a baseline. These targets have been validated by the SBTi.
Carbon Emission Reductions
By the end of 2024, Booking Holdings had reduced its absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 85% compared to 2019. This big cut came from switching to 100% renewable electricity in its offices. Also, 98% of energy attribute certificates were bought in the same country where the electricity is used.
Scope 3 Emissions:
Scope 3 emissions, accounting for 99% of the company’s total GHG emissions, were reduced significantly by the end of 2024 compared to 2019.
Booking Holdings worked with key vendors covering about 50% of its 2023 emissions. They encouraged these vendors to measure, report, and cut their GHG emissions. This effort also aimed to enhance data quality in this area.
Sustainable Travel Initiatives:
Booking Holdings aims for over 50% of its bookings to be made on more sustainable offerings across its platforms by 2027. As of 2023, over 40% of bookings were made on such offerings.
Over 1.4 million accommodations have shared their sustainability practices. Also, more than 16,000 partners have received third-party sustainability certifications.
Industry Collaboration and Advocacy:
In 2023, Booking.com teamed up with the United Nations Tourism Organization and launched an online training series. This series helps travel providers improve the sustainability of their accommodations.
The company also worked with BeCause, an enterprise software provider. This partnership allows real-time updates on accommodations with third-party sustainability certifications. With it, travelers can make informed choices.
Who’s Leading the Green Getaway? A Side-by-Side Look
Airbnb and Booking Holdings both aim for net zero, but their approaches differ. Airbnb aims for net zero in Scopes 1 and 2 by 2030. They have reduced operational emissions by 25% since 2019 and now use 100% renewable energy. Its supplier engagement is growing, though Scope 3 data is limited.
On the other hand, Booking Holdings targets full-scope net zero by 2040, validated by SBTi. It has cut Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 41% and Scope 3 by 25%, while expanding its Sustainable Travel Badge program and engaging over 400 suppliers. Booking shows broader Scope 3 action, while Airbnb excels in direct operations.
Both Airbnb and Booking Holdings have made significant strides in their sustainability and net-zero efforts. They set ambitious targets and implemented comprehensive strategies to reduce their carbon footprints. Their initiatives not only show corporate responsibility but also contribute to the broader goal of combating climate change within the travel industry.
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The post Airbnb vs. Booking Holdings: Who’s Winning the Battle for Financial Growth and Green Goals? appeared first on Carbon Credits.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
- Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
- Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
- Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
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