Booking.com Officially Opens New Campus in the Heart of Amsterdam

AMSTERDAM, 28 JUNE, 2023 - Today Booking.com celebrated the official grand opening of the company’s new Campus in central Amsterdam. Special guest Micky Adriaansens, Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, was on hand to festively commemorate the moment together with Arjan Dijk, the company’s Senior Vice President and CMO, together with other leaders, business partners and members of the community. The new 65,000 m² Campus at the end of Oosterdokseiland and just to the east of Central Station, is now home to all of Booking.com’s more than 6,500 employees in Amsterdam and serves as the company’s official international headquarters. 

The state-of-the-art SMART building not only leverages sensors throughout to function like an ecosystem, for example regulating the lighting and temperature automatically based on actual occupancy and usage, but it has also been constructed to a BREEAM Excellent standard. Other notable highlights of the unique building: 

• More sustainable materials have been used throughout, with much of the furniture repurposed from the company’s previous offices in the city.  
• There are 832 solar panels on the roof and all of the heating and cooling is managed by cutting edge WKO (‘Warmte Koud Opslag’) technology to store and recover both hot and cold air deep beneath the ground during the summer and winter, using no gas at all.
• There are more than 11,000 plants throughout the building, including seven trees and a dedicated underground parking garage with space for more than 2,500 bicycles, supporting employees to commute with the lowest impact options possible.

The new Campus’s design and layout will be continuously optimized to support the flexible world of hybrid working, with a focus on understanding how people balance their time between home and the office and the different tasks that need to be accomplished. The Booking.com Campus already includes 28 communal breakout spaces, specially designed focus booths and areas to meet a variety of diverse cognitive needs and preferences.

“After years of anticipation, this is a great moment in time for our company and our employees,” said Glenn Fogel, President and CEO of Booking.com. “For everyone in Amsterdam to be back together in one building, and such an inspiring one at that, is truly something to be grateful for. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this brings us all even closer together and accelerates our efforts to make travel easier and more seamless for everyone.”

“We are really thrilled to have moved into this stunning, sustainable and inclusive new building, right in the heart of Amsterdam, the city we have called home for over 25 years,” said Arjan Dijk, Senior Vice President and CMO of Booking.com. “It’s a beautiful spot to continue fostering collaboration and innovation for years to come, as we strive to have a long-lasting positive impact, not just on the tech sector in the Netherlands, but for the city and the communities around us, as well.”

Community and impact

To contribute to Oosterdokseiland becoming an even more vibrant part of the city and simultaneously help create new opportunities for communities that often experience challenges in gaining equal access to the job market, Booking.com also revealed that it will be partnering with Refugee Company and Techgrounds to bring to life plans for the 1,500 m² of open restaurant and leisure space on the ground floor of the building.

Through the hospitality concept of A Beautiful Mess, Refugee Company delivers on its mission of helping people from refugee backgrounds to develop new skills, gain experience and start to build a professional network in the Netherlands through their unique learning and working programs. Later this year, A Beautiful Mess will open a new nearly 900m² restaurant on the ground floor of the Booking.com Campus, focusing on flavors and recipes from the Middle East and Africa and with a menu inspired by the cultural background of the chefs in the kitchen. The restaurant will create new job opportunities for participants in Refugee Company’s programs and be fully open to the public with space for 120 diners, as well as additional meeting rooms for workshops and an event space that will feature community-based programming.

“Scaling up our operations and expanding our impact through this opportunity from Booking.com will be transformative for our organization and the people we serve,” said Fleur Bakker, Director of Refugee Company. “We want to create places of belonging that help integrate the skills and souls of every refugee into our shared society. Having the space and support from Booking.com to make this a reality in the center of Amsterdam, is something truly special for us. Moreover, it enables us to work on a scalable model that can be rolled out in other cities in the future.”

A social impact enterprise with a specific focus on supporting women and people with a culturally diverse background, Techgrounds’ aim is to address the current mismatch in the tech labor market. Expanding on its existing relationship with Booking.com, Techgrounds will create a robust program of workshops, hackathons and mentoring opportunities in the new public portion of the Campus to help connect hidden talent from Amsterdam’s diverse neighborhoods with the many opportunities in the wider Dutch tech ecosystem.

“We’ve had the pleasure of working with the Booking.com team for years and are really enthusiastic about the new synergies that will come from having access to this kind of space at such an impactful tech company,” said Ruben Nieuwenhuis, Founding Partner at Techgrounds. “It is our mission to solve the mismatch in the IT labor market. That is why we have set up a joint programme to build a community  that will connect local hidden IT talents in communities from out the Netherlands, with the Dutch tech ecosystem. Via this community, re-skillers are empowered with tech buddies, Q&As with IT-experts, job application advice from recruiters and other ways to start a new career in IT.” 

To further mark this milestone, Booking.com commissioned KPMG to produce a dedicated report, with the aim of coming to a more holistic understanding of the company’s economic, social and environmental impact on the Netherlands. While the report highlights some strategic areas for improvement when it comes to gender equity and environmental impact through the company’s supply chain, it also highlights the positive economic impact Booking.com makes, contributing €3.6 billion to the Dutch economy over the years 2019 to 2021. This also extends to social impact, particularly when it comes to attracting international talent to the local labor market. In fact, for those former Booking.com employees that moved on to new opportunities between 2019 and 2021, 68% went on to work for other companies in the Netherlands, with 43% remaining in the tech sector.

Read the full report here.