Citi Launches New Travel Portal with Booking.com

Citi will be debuting a new portal, Citi Travel, with Booking.com to help customers plan and book their trips, a press release from the bank said.

It comes as Americans are eager to travel, but many Americans have been reporting that they wait for a promotion to book travels.

The new platform will make use of Booking.com’s scale and range, and offer a lot of hotel reservation options.

There are other benefits including a digital platform allowing members to compare options for hotel and car rentals through an online platform. Customers will be able to earn rewards points by using the platform, and choose how to pay for their travels, including using their cards or rewards points or some combination of the two.

Booking.com has had a good time of it lately with business, including seeing $4.3 billion in revenue for the second quarter.

Read more: Booking.com Bets on Payments, Mobile Tech After Strong Q2 Showing

This was a 99% increase from a year earlier, which was the first quarter since the beginning of the pandemic to do better than the corresponding 2019 period.

On an earnings call, the company said its intent was to focus more on its direct business with its Connected Trip and internal payments initiatives.

Glenn Fogel, the company CEO, said there was still some fogginess around the macroeconomic environment, along with questions as to how consumer demand will hold up. But he said he was “encouraged” by the current trends.

Fogel said there were 38% of gross bookings processed through its payment platform in the second quarter, which was the highest since rolling out that feature.

“We continue to increase adoption of payments by our property partners with over 60% of our total Q2 gross bookings coming from properties that have adopted payments,” Fogel said.