Ensuring compliance in 68 countries

Booking.com needed a globally consistent process for statutory reporting and tax compliance, supported by specialist country-specific knowledge. With our managed service, PwC supports Booking.com, giving the company more insight into and control over these processes and increasing productivity.  

Since 1996, Booking.com has grown from an Amsterdam-based hotel reservations start-up to the largest subsidiary of NASDAQ-listed Booking Holdings, with more than 28 million room reservations worldwide, available in 43 languages. After years of rapid growth and further expansion through acquisitions, Booking.com wanted to establish a standardised process for preparing statutory accounts and corporate tax returns across the 68 countries where it has local operations. 

Ensuring compliance was at the top of the list of requirements. 

Booking.com also wanted to work with a partner that could provide central teams with insight into the various standards required in the 68 countries, as well as help them stay compliant as local laws and regulations changed. The company also wanted an easy-to-use and standardised compliance dashboard that would provide up-to-date insight into its compliance status at any time. 

In 2020, PwC’s Connected Tax Compliance team started working with Booking.com. In almost all countries where Booking.com operates, PwC prepares the statutory accounts and corporate tax returns. In approximately 21 of the 68 countries, the managed service also includes performing the monthly local accounting requirements and filing indirect taxes such as VAT.

To streamline data sharing and create a standardised approach, every team at Booking.com uses PwC’s Sightline platform. The platform, processes and dashboards look the same for users in every country. PwC aims to centralise as many of the processes as possible through Booking.com’s regional hubs, located in Amsterdam, Singapore and Sao Paolo.  

A key element of the managed service is that Booking.com employees in each country can reach out to local PwC teams if they need specialised advice on compliance. ‘Having local colleagues in the countries to provide deep specialised knowledge, combined with centralisation where we can, is how we work together', says Peter Paul Hoek, who works in the Connected Tax Compliance practice at PwC Netherlands.

‘Our managed service journey with PwC has not only improved our compliance but has also given us valuable insights to identify business opportunities and proactively improve internal controls', says Sofia Oversluizen, Global Tax Compliance Manager at Booking.com.  

The first year of the partnership was focused on creating a single view of compliance for Booking.com, something the company had never had before. The teams were used to working with different service providers in their own way. Booking.com’s leadership team saw the benefits of a standardised approach and worked closely with PwC to ensure the necessary changes were made.

‘Setting up a managed service is a shared journey. Together with Booking.com, a fast-growing and ambitious company, we looked at what was the best way for them to do this', says Stan Berings, PwC’s Connected Tax Compliance leader in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

‘By implementing a standardised approach to compliance and working with a managed service partner, Booking.com’s finance and tax teams had more time to work on higher-value tasks', Berings adds. This means they can be more productive and add more value to the organisation, without having to hire new people. 

Following the successful implementation of the managed service, PwC holds regular meetings with Booking.com’s three regional finance hubs to discuss any new challenges. There is also a quarterly meeting with the steering committee to discuss how the managed service has met specific KPIs and to review updates to tax legislation and reporting rules. 

Each year, PwC collects feedback from the most collaborative Booking.com employees within the regional teams to identify and implement new opportunities for improvement.

Looking ahead, PwC and Booking.com are working to automate more of the data collection process for statutory accounts and tax returns, further streamlining operations and increasing efficiency.