Darren Huston

Darren Huston responded to a bank analyst's question

Priceline Group had a better-than-expected 2014, with gross travel bookings of $50.3 billion, up from almost $40 billion a year ago. Gross profit for the year was $7.6 billion, up by a third from the prior year.

In the fourth quarter of 2014, Priceline had 24% growth in hotel rooms units booked. Most of its revenue came from Booking.com.

Not worried about Expedia

On an earnings call, CEO Darren Huston responded to a bank analyst's question by saying he wasn't worried about Expedia's recent acquisitions of online travel agencies Wotif, Travelocity, and Orbitz.

"Our focus is on organic growth and acquisition. We're focusing on premium, winning brands that add new business competencies or geographies. It's all been adjacent growth rather than tripling down on similar brands, like others are doing. I don't see the Orbitz deal, if it passes, as being a negative to Priceline. The global travel market was maybe $1.3 trillion, and if you add Expedia and Priceline's businesses all together, they amount to less than 10% of that. There's tremendous potential for us.... Expedia's average room night rate increase was higher in recent quarters than ours. I give them credit for a great quarter, but we have a different philosophy when it comes to building inventory.... We pride ourselves on our growth rate. Our room night growth is 100% organic, unlike what you're seeing with Expedia."

The company's market capitalization is above $50 billion, roughly four times that of rival Expedia Inc.

Rental properties

Last year, Booking.com inventory rose to more than 600,000 listings, up 41% year-over-year. Much of that was due to a doubling of vacation rental properties, to about 270,000 properties.

That meant that it had more than one million holiday rooms available and instantly confirmable on its platform on any given day. It also meant that vacation rentals are becoming a greater proportion of Booking.com's overall inventory.

Huston said the homeowner property category was of interest to the company, but it poses challenges because the product is different from hotels.

"Our next move as a company is to address homeowner-managed rather than professionally-managed vacation rentals....There is a lot of interest among our consumers in self-catered products.... We've taken steps here. We've adjusted our business system. We've rolled out a simple extranet. We have a lot of things in our pipeline to address the needs for a single-owner model. Delivering single-owner vacation rentals is ultimately where our destination as a company."

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