Bookings.com and Airbnb’s Role In a Tourism Economy of Genocide vs. Human Rights

The Human Rights Council is an intergovernmental body within the United Nations system comprising 47 States, responsible for promoting and protecting all human rights worldwide.

It can discuss all thematic human rights issues and situations that require its attention throughout the year. It meets at the United Nations Office at Geneva.

eTurboNews receives an advance copy of the soon-to-be-released report by the Human Rights Council submitted by the following member countries:

HRC Home

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, commonly known as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Tourism plays a significant role in this report, which can be downloaded here.

The Human Rights Council report states:

Occupation Tourism

Major online travel platforms, used by millions to reserve accommodation, profit from the occupation by selling tourism that sustains the colonies, excludes Palestinians, promotes settler narratives, and legitimizes annexation.

Airbnb | Vacation rentals, cabins, beach houses, & more

Get an Airbnb for every kind of trip → 8 million vacation rentals → 2 million Guest Favorites → 220+ countries and regions worldwide

Booking Holdings Inc. and Airbnb, Inc. list properties and hotel rooms in Israeli colonies. Booking.com has more than doubled its listings in the West Bank – from 26 in 2018 to 70 by May 2023 – and tripled its East Jerusalem listings to 39 in the year following October 2023.

Airbnb has also amplified its colonial profiteering, growing from 350 listings in 2016 to 350 in 2025, collecting a commission of up to 23 percent. These listings are linked with restricting Palestinian access to land and endangering nearby villages.

In Tekoa, Airbnb enables settler promotion of a “warm and loving community”, whitewashing settler violence against the neighbouring Palestinian village of Tuqu‘.

Booking.com and Airbnb have been in the OHCHR database since 2020.

Booking.com may label properties as “Palestinian territory, Israeli settlement”, but it continues to profit from the colonies and faces criminal complaints in the Kingdom of the Netherlands for laundering proceeds.

Airbnb briefly delisted illegal colony properties in 2018 but reversed course under pressure, now donating profits to “humanitarian” causes and converting colonial profiteering into humanitarian-washing

UN-Tourism

UN-Tourism has been neutral so far in this issue of Human rights. It remains to be seen how this organization will react, if at all.

Enablers

A list of enablers – financial, research, legal, consulting, media, and advertising firms, long involved in sustaining the settler-colonial occupation through knowledge, narratives, skills, and investment- have continued to support, profit from, and normalize an economy operating in genocidal mode.

Global retail

Israeli products, including those from settlements, flood global markets through major retailers, often with little scrutiny. To dodge growing backlash, companies mask their origin through misleading labels, barcodes, and supply-chain mixing, effectively making the product shelf-ready.

Global logistics giants like A.P. Moller – Maersk A/S are integral to this ecosystem; for years, they have shipped goods from the colonies and companies listed in the OHCHR database directly to the United States and other markets.

OHCHR Databases

Information Repositories Anti-discrimination Database http://adsdatabase.ohchr.org/ Search for information, policies and measures taken at the international, regional and national levels to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

In many countries, no distinction is made between products from Israel and those from its colonies. Even in the European Union, where labelling is required, these goods are still allowed on the market, and the responsibility is put on uninformed consumers. Given the illegality of the colonies under international law, these products should not be traded at all.

Supermarket chains, including many listed in the OHCHR database, and e-commerce platforms such as Amazon.com operate directly in occupied territories, sustaining their economy, enabling expansion, and participating in apartheid through discriminatory service delivery.