When Employee Silence Breaks: What the Booking.com Layoffs Reveal About Culture

A Profitable Giant, Making Cuts

On July 16, 2025, Booking.com confirmed it will cut between 200 and 1,000 jobs in Amsterdam and roughly 1,000 globally. The company, known for its experimental culture and dominant market position in travel tech, framed the move as part of a "restructuring to simplify operations."

This news hit hard — not just because of the scale of the layoffs, but because of the timing. Booking.com is not a struggling business trying to stay afloat. Its parent company, Booking Holdings, reported $23.7 billion in revenue and $5.9 billion in net profit in 2024. These are not survival-mode numbers. These are growth-mode numbers.

So why the drastic reduction in workforce?

The answer lies deeper than cost optimization. This is about cultural transformation, automation readiness, and—perhaps most importantly—what happens when employees stop feeling safe enough to speak up.

A Restructuring in Slow Motion

What looks like a sudden layoff is often just the final act of a much longer script. In Booking.com’s case, the writing was on the wall for months—if not years.

• November 2024: Rumors emerge that Booking Holdings is planning a global reorganization, with Booking.com under review.

• December 2024: The company cuts 60 roles in Rocket Travel, its B2B unit. It’s framed as a “strategic reset.”

• March–April 2025: A proposed social plan in the Netherlands is met with strong resistance from unions, who describe it as vague and inadequate.

• April 24, 2025: Booking.com officially announces a 10% cut to its Amsterdam workforce, affecting up to 900 employees.

• July 16, 2025: The most significant wave begins. Between 200–1,000 jobs will be eliminated in Amsterdam, with 1,000 globally.

Each wave became a little larger, a little more blunt. What began as “targeted streamlining” evolved into a full-scale rearchitecture of how Booking.com is staffed and operated.

The Breakdown in Communication

While the company has framed this restructuring as a way to “reduce bureaucracy and speed up decision-making,” the internal communication surrounding it has been widely criticized as opaque, rushed, and at times dismissive.

Unions argue that the "voluntary" exit plans offered lacked transparency and left too much uncertainty.

Employees — particularly those on relocation packages — were offered little clarity about visa support or severance timelines.

The result? A workplace that once thrived on clarity and experimentation now feels confused and uncertain to many of its employees.

Internal leaks and Reddit threads paint a more troubling picture. One that suggests these layoffs didn’t come in a vacuum — they were preceded by months of internal friction, passive pressure, and subtle cultural shifts that made people feel replaceable long before they were told they were.

“Booking.com is known for making people leave before they’re laid off. They gaslight you, shift your responsibilities, or leave you in limbo.”— Anonymous Reddit user, former employee

This isn’t just a people problem — it’s a culture problem. And in high-growth, high-pressure tech environments, culture doesn’t erode in a day. It erodes in silence.

The Psychology of Silent Workforces

When employees no longer feel safe raising concerns, offering critique, or even asking for clarity — that’s when organizational health starts to decay.

In psychological terms, this is known as organizational silence. It happens when people stop speaking up out of fear of backlash, futility, or professional risk. In some companies, it becomes so normalized that silence masquerades as alignment. On the surface, everything seems fine. But beneath it, resentment and disengagement grow.

Booking.com once prided itself on experimentation, openness, and collaboration. But if silence is the dominant mode of communication in 2025, it’s not just losing employees — it’s losing its edge.

Outsourcing, AI, and the Invisible Layoffs

Many observers believe that the real driver behind the layoffs is not performance or profit — but automation and outsourcing.

Booking.com has already shifted many of its multilingual customer service roles to third-party vendors. These were once core to the brand’s identity — real people with deep product knowledge, offering support in dozens of languages from its Amsterdam headquarters.

Now, much of that work is done elsewhere, often with fewer resources and less control.

The restructuring could be the next phase of that strategy: automating functions, flattening hierarchies, and leaning on AI where humans used to handle complexity.

This isn’t speculation without evidence. Booking Holdings’ CEO Glenn Fogel has repeatedly stated that AI would reshape their operational backbone — not just in customer service, but in legal review, HR screening, pricing, and beyond.

If you’re a knowledge worker at Booking.com today, there’s a growing sense that your job isn’t being eliminated — it’s being automated.

The Irony of “Bureaucracy Reduction”

On paper, reducing layers of management sounds noble. It’s a buzzword every investor loves.

But when done hastily, or without careful process design, it can actually increase internal confusion. You remove the people who serve as translators between vision and execution, or those who hold institutional knowledge about cross-functional alignment.

Booking.com is not a small startup anymore. It has over 13,000 employees. If you flatten too aggressively without rebuilding the structure beneath, you don’t become faster — you become fragmented.

And in a post-pandemic world where remote work, compliance, and cultural fragmentation are already challenges — flat doesn’t always mean agile. Sometimes it just means vulnerable.

What Competitors Got Right

Compare this approach to that of Airbnb in 2020.

Airbnb’s layoffs during the pandemic were a masterclass in how to handle necessary cuts with humanity. CEO Brian Chesky wrote a public letter explaining the decisions, offered generous severance, and created alumni support programs to help those leaving find new roles.

Or look at Spotify in 2024 — which rolled out layoffs with months of notice, internal town halls, and individualized support from team leads.

What both had in common wasn’t perfection — it was honesty.

Booking.com, by contrast, has relied on legal language, vague press releases, and insider-only briefings. That may protect the brand in the short term — but it damages it in the long term.

Especially in a talent market where reputation travels faster than job offers.

A Cultural Inflection Point

This is where the real opportunity lies.

If Booking.com wants to sustain its competitive advantage, it must rethink how it treats its people in moments of pressure. Not just from a compliance standpoint — but from a culture, trust, and leadership standpoint.

Because no amount of AI or market dominance can save a company that’s culturally disconnected from its workforce.

Rebuilding trust doesn’t require a brand overhaul. It requires:

• Owning the missteps in communication

• Engaging employees directly in the rebuild

• Aligning values with decisions, not just slogans

• And returning to the basics: transparency, respect, and humanity

Final Thoughts: This Isn’t Just About Jobs

Layoffs don’t just remove people from payroll — they reshape the emotional fabric of an organization. They affect those who leave and those who stay.

The way you handle them defines how your brand is remembered.

Booking.com’s layoffs are not just a business event. They are a cultural signal, a wake-up call, and a reminder that no company — no matter how profitable — is immune to internal erosion.

The silence has been broken.

Now the question is: Will the company listen?