This question is mostly aimed at folks who do a lot of European travel.

Few people know it, but booking.com is one of the highest market-capitalization travel companies in the world. This Dutch company is actually owned by Priceline.com, and accounts for almost 9/10ths of Priceline's profits. The market cap of Priceline is now more than $32 billion which, for example, is more than the entire US airline industry combined.

Outside of Wall Street, though, few Americans have ever heard of booking.com. It's website doesn't look particularly impressive and American travellers tend not to get terribly excited by online travel agencies anyway (since they don't really "do much" for you as a traveller, at least in the USA).

So what about Europeans and booking.com? It does look like booking.com offers more small hotels than competing travel agencies. Are the prices good? And is it better to book with them than direct with the hotel? And are there other European travel agencies who offer something similar?

I understand that hotels have to pay booking.com a 15% commission, which seems rather high, and would make me think that both traveller and hotel would prefer to avoid this middleman. Is that not the case, though?

Any insight in to why booking.com is or isn't better than other online travel agencies would be very helpful to me, as (for investment purposes) I'm trying to understand the company better. Thanks!