These 4 Travel Stocks Depend on Holiday Spending

Marriott (NASDAQ: MAR), Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG), Airbnb (NASDAQ: ABNB), Carnival (NYSE: CCL): four stocks, one very old habit. When families leave home for the holidays, someone has to provide them with a place to stay, whether it's a hotel room, a booking app, a rented cabin, or a cabin at sea.

Getting there costs more this year. Airline tickets have surged, especially around the holidays, and award tickets for Thanksgiving flights between big U.S. airports cost 32% more miles than last year, per CNBC.

People are still going. The real question is how each of these travel companies gets paid when they do.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Marriott gets paid even when you stay home

Marriott International doesn't own most of its hotels. It collects fees from owners who use its brands, so fuller, pricier rooms mean bigger checks. In the third quarter, revenue per available room (RevPAR), a measure of how much each room earns, rose 6.5% worldwide and 7.4% in the U.S. and Canada. Management raised its full-year forecast and expects RevPAR to grow by 4.5% to 5% in the fourth quarter.

Vacationers did the heavy lifting. Leisure RevPAR rose 9% in the U.S. and Canada as people "continue to prioritize in-person experiences like travel," CEO Anthony Capuano said on the earnings call.

The holiday angle goes beyond rooms. Franchise and management fees rose 13%, helped by higher fees from Marriott Bonvoy co-branded credit cards. Bonvoy now has about 309 million members.

2. Booking is tapping the brakes

Booking Holdings, which owns a host of sites such as Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Kayak, and OpenTable, had a strong summer. Room nights, meaning one room booked for one night, grew 7%, and gross bookings, the total value of trips sold, rose 10% to $54.5 billion.

But demand cooled late in the quarter, especially for international trips, and October brought new trouble from the Middle East conflict, higher airfares, and unrest in some European cities. Booking expects room nights to grow just 1% to 3% this quarter. The bright spot is close to home: Domestic travel "has remained resilient."

Investors have noticed the slowdown. Shares closed at $160 recently, after a 25-for-1 stock split in April, and they're down about 25% this year. If holiday sales hold up better than management fears they will, that's where the surprise could come from.

3. Airbnb helps bring families together

Airbnb is the one made for holiday gatherings, such as when a dozen relatives want a house with one big kitchen. Its third quarter showed real momentum: Nights and seats booked rose 16%, revenue grew 19% to $4.9 billion, and growth in first-time bookers sped up to 13%, the fastest since early 2022. Airbnb raised its full-year outlook and expects fourth-quarter revenue to climb 16% to 18%.

It's also making holiday trips easier to say yes to. Its "reserve now, pay later" lets guests lock in eligible stays without paying anything up front, which Airbnb pitches for family trips "where everyone's still sorting out who owes what." Searches for Christmas-to-New Year's stays are jumping in small mountain towns a few hours' drive from big cities. For example, they're up 37% for Hunter, New York, in the Catskills.

4. With Carnival, the holiday cruises are already paid for

Carnival works differently. People book cruises months ahead and put down deposits, so the company knows a lot about its holiday season before it arrives. Customer deposits hit a third-quarter record of $7.6 billion, up about 7%, even though it isn't adding capacity over the next 12 months, and 2027 bookings are at record occupancy and prices.

About half of Carnival's sailings in its fiscal first quarter, which runs December through February, head to the Caribbean. Its private island stops help, too. Celebration Key in the Bahamas welcomed almost 2.5 million guests in its first year.

Fuel prices are the catch. Higher fuel prices knocked about $150 million off this year's profit outlook since June, though better pricing and efficiency more than made up for it. Of these four companies, Carnival's the one whose holiday money is already in the bank.

Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Airbnb and Booking Holdings. The Motley Fool recommends Carnival Corp. and Marriott International. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.