Good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to be here t o present our 2025 preliminary results on March 26. Today, I'm joined by Caroline Sherry, our CFO, and David Brady, our Head of Commercial Finance and Investor Relations. I would like to propose that we move past slide 2 and slide 3 and take those as read, which is disclaimers about Hostelworld, and go directly to slide 5, the key highlights. Before I take you through the detail, let me give you the shape of the full year numbers. Net bookings were 7 million, up 1% year-over-year. Net average booking value was EUR 13.43, up 2%, and that was driven primarily by Elevate increasing commission rates from May onwards and also by an improved geographic mix in the second half. Net revenue was EUR 93.8 million, up 2%.
Those top line numbers reflect a year in which the first half was soft and the second half accelerated meaningfully, driven by the commission rate improvement taking effect from May and that improved geographic mix. Three other metrics to draw your attention to. First, social member messaging grew 81% year-on-year from a base of 41% in full year 2024. The engagement numbers really shows that our social network is genuinely accelerating. Second, the proportion of bed nights booked via the app reached 63%, up from 60% in FY 2024. App bookings, of course, are structurally better for us. They're lower cost, and there's obviously more social engagement. Third, marketing as a percentage of revenue was 48% for the full year, within our 45%-50% guidance range.
While it's higher than the FY 2024 46%, that reflects the CPC cost inflation we experienced in Q1, which we had flagged to investors back in April 2025. Overall, the more meaningful signal is in the second half, where the marketing ratio fell to 45%, the low end of our guidance range, reflecting the growing structural benefit of our social network. On the bottom line, adjusted EBITDA was EUR 19.9 million, and that's in line with market consensus, representing a margin of 21%, which is slightly ahead of the guidance range. It is down from EUR 21.8 million in FY 2024, and I think I want to spend a couple of moments just being clear about why.
The first is, throughout 2025, we ramped investment, primarily headcount, to build and launch three new initiatives, budget accommodation, Social Passes, and of course, the OccasionGenius acquisition. To be clear, that hiring ramp completed by year-end 2025. We do not contemplate increasing investment in headcount further in 2026, and the returns are already beginning to show in our Q1 trading. Caroline will take you through the detailed bridges for FY 2025, and I will cover Q1 growth in the growth strategy update section. On the balance sheet, closing cash was EUR 12.2 million, actually higher than the EUR 8.2 million we opened the year with, which reflects strong underlying cash generation.
We ended the year in a modest net debt position at EUR 1.6 million, and this is really entirely a function of the EUR 10.3 million AIB facility we drew down to fund the OccasionGenius acquisition. Caroline will cover the cash flow in more detail. Finally, we reinstated the dividend in 2025. The total dividend for the year is EUR 0.024 per share, comprising an interim dividend that was paid of EUR 0.0082 paid in September and a proposed final of EUR 0.0158 per share payable in May this year. Moving to the next slide. This slide pulls together the narrative behind those numbers, and I've organized it into two themes: accelerating revenue and improved marketing efficiency and social travel platform expansion on track. On the financial side, the headline is the second half inflection.
The full year net revenue of EUR 93.8 million was up 2% for the year, but that masks a meaningful acceleration. Generated revenue in the second half rose 7%, demonstrating the strengthening trajectory we are carrying into 2026. Second half direct marketing costs fell to 45% of revenue, down from 48% in second half 2024, reflecting the growing structural benefit of our social network. An adjusted EBITDA of EUR 19.9 million, in line with market consensus at a 21% margin, which again, is slightly ahead of our guidance range. On the platform side, four things to highlight. First, social network engagement. Our social community reached 3.4 million members, with member messaging growing 81% year-on-year. Social members book approximately twice as frequently as non-members and three times more likely to book on our app. Second, marketplace monetization. Elevate is working.
Second half 2025 effective commission rates reached 16.7%, up from 15.4% in second half 2024. This is a proven and growing revenue driver, and the rate has continued to increase in the first quarter of 2026. Third, inventory and expansion. We launched budget accommodation via a third-party inventory supplier. Initially in 50 destinations in December, and now subsequently expanded across 18,000 destinations, extending our offering well beyond hostels. Broader platform and language rollout is underway in 2026. Fourth, social network monetization. Social Passes launched in November 2025, creating a new subscription revenue stream and opening the platform for travelers who do not book accommodation. Importantly, the early results are showing that 37% of Social Passes buyers are new to Hostelworld, indicating that this product will help accelerate growth of our social travel platform.
Taken together, revenue accelerating in the second half, marketing efficiency improving, all four platform initiatives live and scaling, this is the foundation for our growth in 2026. I'd now like to hand over to Caroline, who will talk about the highlights in more detail.
Many thanks, Gary. I'm very pleased to be here this morning to talk to Hostelworld's full year 2025 financial results. If we move to the next slide, please. Okay, this slide looks at net bookings by source nationality. This is the nationality of the customers who generated 7 million bookings in total in 2025. Bookings grew 1%, and as Gary mentioned, we saw a much stronger second half to the year. Bookings grew 2% compared to the first six months of the year, where net bookings were flat. Looking first at Europe and the U.K., which together comprise 60% of our source customer bookings, we can see that demand was particularly strong from our U.K. and European customers. Net bookings made by U.K. customers grew 3% year-on-year, and European customers grew 2% year-on-year.
Sourced bookings from U.S. and Canadian customers, which accounts for 20% of our customer base, was flat year-over-year. Again, we saw a stronger H2 performance, which recovered from a 4% decline in the first half of the year. Asia continued its very strong growth trajectory, and customers in this region were up 3% year-over-year. We saw strong growth in both intra-Asia travel and international travel from this region. Moving to the next slide, please. While the trend of customers traveling to low-cost destinations persisted through the year, we did see a much stronger demand for locations aside from Asia, with Eastern Europe, Oceania and LATAM having strong performances in the second half of the year. Asia accounted for 31% of our FY 2025 bookings, with South Asia growing +4% and North Asia growing +15%.
Customers from Europe and the U.K. were a significant driver of this Asian performance, with bookings from Europe to Asia up 6% and bookings from the U.K. to Asia up 7%. Asia is attractive to customers globally, and this region saw growth from customers across all regions, including North America, Canada, LATAM and Oceania. Europe remains our biggest market, accounting for just under 40% of bookings. Performance here improved in the second half of the year. Europe in total grew +1% in H2, compared to a -5% contraction in H1, the benefit of continued price deflation. Moving to the next slide. This slide looks at how that source destination booking performance translated into revenue. Generated revenue, being gross revenue less cancellations, was up 3% year-over-year, going from -1% in H1 to +7% growth in H2.
We saw revenue growth across all low-cost destinations, particularly so in Asia. Looking first to South Asia, revenue here grew +22%, markedly ahead of booking growth of +4%, the benefit of bed price inflation. North Asia revenue also grew ahead of booking performance, with revenue growth of +20% compared to booking growth of 15%, again, due to the benefit of bed price inflation. Looking next to Europe, Eastern Europe saw revenue growth of 4% compared to 2% booking growth, with a significant revenue growth rate of 12% in H2. Revenue was down in Western Europe on a full year basis at -4%. Again, we evidenced a significant uptick in performance in H2, with revenue going from -9% in H1 to +2% in H2.
As I mentioned in the previous slide, throughout 2025, we evidenced a reduction in European bed prices, which has helped to stimulate demand. Most significantly, the introduction of Elevate, our commission rate monetization tool, has had an enormous benefit to revenue growth in H2. The effective commission rate grew from 16.7%, up from 15.4% in H2 2024, and this continues to be a growing revenue driver. Moving to the next slide. This next slide looks at how this performance has translated into net margin. Working from left to right, in FY 2024, we generated EUR 46.6 million of net margin.
Since then, we've generated EUR 7 million of net bookings and EUR 93.8 million in net revenue. Paid marketing, which is all paid marketing costs over revenue, less cancellations, was 48% for the year, within our guidance range of 45%-50%. Average booking values were 2% higher year-over-year. We've seen a very strong uptake in the Elevate product, which I mentioned. This is the new hostel ranking system which we launched in May. The combination of increasing the take rate through higher commissions and the lessening geo-mix headwind as Europe returned to growth delivered ABV upside. The balance of our EUR 0.3 million reduction is principally deferred revenue, a provision movement which accounts for free cancellation bookings. These components combined delivered a margin of EUR 45.7 million, down 2% versus prior. Moving to the next slide.
Here, we're looking at our operating cost base. These are our costs excluding paid marketing costs, and this slide looks at the evolution of our cost base over the past three years. Operating costs in 2025 were EUR 1 million higher than the previous year. We invested in strategically important areas to support the delivery of key Capital Markets Day initiatives. OpEx has remained at 27% of net revenue for the past three years running. Starting from the bottom up, the purple block is wages and salaries. Headcount in December was at 269, up from 227 in December 2024, as we increased investment in development resources this year. We have balanced these investments through hiring in lower cost destinations, increasing our Portuguese headcount.
This, combined with lower discretionary compensation, means that our wages and salary costs for the year are broadly flat versus prior year, despite the increase in headcount. Contractor costs, the navy block, these have increased year-over-year as we continue to utilize temporary resources in low-cost destinations, flexing the support as the need arises. The gray block, which is our tech investment, has increased by 9%. Again, investment to support the delivery of the strategic initiatives and the new capabilities that we set out at our Capital Markets Day. The final block, this is made up of all other operating costs, and these costs have reduced over 10% year-on-year. A continuous prudent management of our cost base across the business. Moving to the next slide.
This chart clearly shows the acceleration performance we have seen across all key metrics from the first half of the year into the second half of the year and through to the last quarter, Q4. There has been a significant step up from the first half of the year, where ABV, revenue and margin had all contracted year- over- year, and where marketing percentage was outside of our guidance range. Into the second half of the year, we saw strong growth across ABV, revenue and margin, all with marketing investment at the bottom of our guidance range at 45%. Looking specifically at Q4, there was a further acceleration of revenue performance, reaching double-digit revenue growth, double-digit margin growth, with marketing percentage below our guidance range at 43%.
This momentum has continued into the first quarter of 2026, which Gary will speak to in more detail in his section. Moving to the next slide, we're gonna look at how this performance has translated into EBITDA. Starting from the left, we made a profit of EUR 21.8 million in 2024. A spike in Q1 marketing costs delivered a EUR 1.7 million reduction in margin. Net bookings growth of 1% delivered EUR 0.4 million of margin growth. ABV grew 5% in H2, benefiting from the strong uptake of the Elevate product by the hostel community, and this delivered EUR 0.7 million of margin. An increase in platform and development costs resulted in a EUR 1 million increase in our cost base, which I've covered off in the previous slide. Deferred revenue was a EUR 0.3 million hit.
The timing of free cancellation balance sheet provision movement. From an EBITDA perspective, we delivered an adjusted EBITDA profit of EUR 19.9 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 21%, in line with market guidance. Now we're gonna move on to the balance sheet and looking at performance from a cash perspective. We started the year with EUR 8.2 million of cash. We recognized EUR 93.8 million in booking revenue. Offsetting this, our direct costs, our operating costs, we capitalized a portion of development labor costs. We incurred a small proportion of exceptional costs, and combined with a slight decrease in working capital, gets you to EUR 10.1 million in cash flows. Cash conversion for the year reduced to 51%, reflecting an increase in working capital requirements and investment in development resources.
One of the major milestone events in the year was the acquisition of OccasionGenius, the B2B events discovery platform. We acquired this business for EUR 10.3 million, which was funded by a three-year debt facility with AIB at an interest rate of 2% over Euribor. We continued to repay the warehoused payroll taxes owed to Irish Revenue . We owed EUR 6.2 million at the start of the year and subsequently paid EUR 2.7 million, with EUR 3.5 million outstanding. This is an interest-free liability, which will be repaid in full by May 2027.
We commenced a GBP 5 million share buyback in June, and as of the end of 2025, GBP 3.9 million worth of shares have been repurchased and subsequently canceled, and this program is now substantially complete. As communicated at our Capital Markets Day in April 2025, we reinstated our progressive dividend, paying an interim dividend of EUR 0.0082 per share in September, and a final dividend of EUR 0.0158 per share will be paid in May 2026. This brings the total dividend for FY 2025 to EUR 0.0240 per share. All of these combined delivered a closing cash position of EUR 12.2 million and a net debt position of EUR 1.6 million. Moving to the next slide and looking at capital allocation.
This year, we have executed against each of the capital allocation objectives we set out at our Capital Markets Day to create long-term value for our shareholders. We continue to repay the liability owed to Irish Revenue, paying as per the agreed payment plan. We have reinstated a progressive dividend with a target annual dividend payout ratio of between 20%-40% of adjusted profit after tax, in line with the capital allocation framework presented at the Capital Markets Day in April 2025. The board paid an interim dividend, as discussed on the previous slide, in September and has declared a final dividend of EUR 0.0158 per share payable in May 2026. We announced and substantially completed a GBP 5 million share buyback program. Finally, in M&A, we acquired OccasionGenius in October 2025.
More of which Gary will discuss in the strategy section. So moving to the final slide in my section, I'm gonna finish up by talking about ESG. I'm delighted to say that our innovative and pioneering Staircase to Sustainability framework, which we launched a couple of years ago, now has over 2,500 hostels displaying the sustainability badge on our platform. We were honored to have been awarded the Investors in Diversity Gold Accreditation earlier in 2025. We are one of just 34 organizations in Ireland to hold this accreditation and the first travel company to do so. This award recognizes our unique inclusive culture and DE&I practices. Here in Hostelworld, we take responsibility for our own sustainability practices. For the past five years, Hostelworld has been working with South Pole to manage our carbon emissions.
With that, I'm going to hand back to Gary.
Thank you very much, Caroline. This is the strategy update or section of our full year 2025 preliminary results presentation, and I want to use this time to do three things. First, remind you of the commitments that we made at our Capital Markets Day in April. Second, show you the evidence that we've delivered on all of them. Third, explain why the platform we built position us well for what's coming next in the AI era. You'll see the tagline on the screen, "Came for burgers, left planning Croatia." It's a real example of what our social network does. It captures something you'll hear me coming back to throughout this section. Our users don't just book, they discover, connect, and plan together, and that's the thing that we're building. Turning to the next slide, please.
Let me start with what we said we would do at our Capital Markets Day in April 2025. Six commitments were made, and all six of these were delivered on time. First, Elevate, our marketplace monetization program, launched in May. Commission rates increased from 15.8% in the first half of 2025 to 16.7% in the second half, and that rate has continued to increase in Q1 2026. Second, Social Passes launched in mid-November. This creates a new revenue stream, time-bound paid access to our social network for travelers who don't need accommodation. Third, Budget Accommodation expansion went live in December. We now have 18,000 destinations accessible for iOS app users in English language, and that's up from 50 destinations at the end of last year, with further rollout to follow in 2026. Fourth, OccasionGenius.
The acquisition gives us a proprietary events and things to do layer across 300 cities, which will scale up to 700 cities by the end of first half this year. We completed the acquisition in October 2025, and integration into the main platform is on track for late Q2 2026. We also reinstated a progressive dividend with an interim payment in September last year and the final payment in May this year, as Caroline mentioned. Finally, our share buyback program. We completed GBP 3.9 million of the GBP 5 million target by year-end. The program is continuing, and it's substantially complete. Overall, the reason I start here is credibility. We made specific public commitments in April 2025, and we've delivered on every one of them. It's that track record which is the foundation of everything that follows.
If we could move to the next slide, please. This slide captures the strategic transformation of the business on a single slide. In 2024, Hostelworld was a hostel-focused OTA. It was a good one. We had a loyal customer base, but we had a fixed addressable market. We only had hostels. We had static commission rates and a growing app-based social network. In 2026, I'm pleased to report we're a materially different business. Three things have changed. First, the addressable market is larger. Budget accommodation through third-party inventory opens us to a far wider universe of accommodation options in significantly more destinations than our current directly contracted inventory. Social Passes open the platform to travelers who don't need a bed at all. Second, we have multiple growing revenue streams. We have our core hostel OTA commissions, which are growing through Elevate.
We have incremental revenue from budget accommodation booking and subscription-style revenue from Social Passes. Overall, where there was one revenue stream, now there are three. Third, the value proposition for our travelers is compounding in value. We are building a unified social travel ecosystem, one app through which you can meet people, find things to do, and book somewhere to stay. Importantly, every user makes the data richer, which makes the recommendations better, which in turn attracts more users. Turn to the next slide, please. Our social network continues to grow, and the metrics are telling a very consistent story. If you look on the left-hand side, year-on-year unique social members are up 8%, unique chat users are up 18%, messages sent across the network are up 81%, and messages sent per user are up 53%.
What these numbers show collectively is that engagement is growing faster than membership, which is exactly what you expect to see as network effects kick in. Each new member makes the network more valuable for existing members, which in turn attracts more new members. On the economic side, social members in their first 91 days book twice as frequently as non-members, and they're three times more likely to use the app. What this tells us is that the social network is attracting and retaining more valuable youth travelers, people who engage more, travel more, and book more through cheaper channels. Looking ahead, I see four drivers that will continue to grow the social network. First, more data powering more relevant AI-driven recommendations. Second, budget accommodation rollout creating social density in a wider range of destinations.
Third, Social Passes providing a new entry point for travelers who don't need accommodation, but they do want access to our community. Finally, OccasionGenius. On OccasionGenius specifically, once integrated towards the tail end of Q2 2026, it will give social members daily updated things to do content across 750 cities. That matters in two ways. For members who are already traveling, it gives them a reason to open the app in the city they're visiting to find events and experiences nearby. For members at home, it creates the possibility of buying a social pass simply to see what's happening in their own city, extending the use case well beyond the trip itself. Next slide, please. This slide gives you the status of each of our three revenue streams, where they are today, what they're delivering, and what comes next.
If I start with the core hostel business, it's performing well. Commission rates have moved from 15.2% in H1 2024 up to 17.7% in the first quarter of 2026. Furthermore, we believe there's further runway. Our directly contracted hostels have accepted meaningful rate increases without adverse impact on conversion or supply relationships, and we will continue to grow these rates as we deliver more value to supply through better data, better demand quality, and richer platform tools. Turning to the middle, budget accommodation is currently live across 18,000 destinations for iOS English language users. 12% of these customers are new to Hostelworld entirely, so we're growing the top of the funnel. Total transaction values are about the same as what we're seeing on our directly contracted inventory. Cancellation rates are roughly in line with our directly contracted inventory.
Importantly, social network usage by these customers matches usage by customers who come through the core business. The next steps are scaling to all platforms and all languages throughout 2026. Finally, Social Passes are live globally. Importantly, 37% of customers are new to Hostelworld, an even higher new to platform proportion than budget accommodation or even our core hostel business. The product mix is still evolving, but broadly speaking, it's two-thirds weekly passes and one-third monthly passes. I'm pleased to report satisfaction is 80%, repurchase intent is at 60%. Finally, the OccasionGenius integration in Q2 2026 is what takes the value proposition from a simple access to the chat network to full access to the full social travel platform. This is when we expect to see both volume and pricing power develop still further. Next slide, please.
Before I take you through these charts, a word on what they measure. The term net transactions here includes all three of our revenue streams. It's directly contracted hostel bookings, indirectly contracted accommodation bookings, and those Social Passes purchases. In the first half, the contribution from budget accommodation and Social Passes is zero. We hadn't launched them. In the second half, that contribution was pretty much immaterial because both launched at the tail end of Q4. However, in Q1 2026, it's starting to become visible in the numbers, and we obviously expect this to scale throughout the year. With that context, if I start on the left-hand side, net transactions across all three revenue streams, 0.2% in H1 2025, 1.7% in second half 2025, and more than 3% in Q1 2026.
If I look at generated revenue, -1.2% in first half 2025, +7.1% in H2 2025, and more than 12% in Q1 2026. The direction is clear and consistent. However, if you look at revenue per transaction, this metric is up 10% in Q1 2026, and I want to be precise about what is driving that and how I expect it to evolve over time. The first point is the commission rate expansion on our directly contracted inventory is the primary driver. On budget accommodation, we earn approximately half the commission rate of our directly contracted inventory. As 3PI scales, it will have a moderating effect on the blended revenue per transaction, even though the underlying booking values are slightly higher.
Social Passes, similarly, EUR 4.99 for a weekly pass and EUR 9.99 for a monthly pass, with the mix broadly two-thirds weekly and one-third monthly. The revenue per transaction from Social Passes is gonna be below the EUR 13.43 we earn per transaction on the directly contracted inventory in full year 2025. That growth in revenue per transaction is really being driven by Elevate, not by mix shift to 3PI or Social Passes. Over time, as 3PI and Social Passes scale, the blended metric will reflect that mix. The medium-term revenue growth model will therefore be driven increasingly by transaction growth. The addressable market we can now reach is materially larger than before, and as 3PI and Social Passes scale, growth in overall transaction volumes will more than offset the moderating effect of product mix on revenue per transaction.
Finally, marketing as a percent of generated revenue is below 50% in first quarter 2026. That's better than the first half in 2025 and within our guidance range of 45%-50%, and it is supported by faster revenue growth. The direction is right. Moving to the next slide. This slide gets to what I think is the most strategic context for this business right now. If I start looking on the left, the way people find places to travel and stay is fundamentally changing. You know, two to three years ago, most travelers typed hostel in Barcelona in Google. Today, they are asking questions like the ones on the screen. I'm going to Primavera Sound in June. Find me a hostel where other hostel festival goers are staying so I can find a group to go with.
Of course, this is a fundamentally different kind of query. It has social context, it has event context, and a desire for human connection baked in, and Google Search cannot answer it. Traditional OTAs cannot answer it, but we can. The proof of this is not an external study. It is the growth of our own social network. The numbers we just looked at on the prior page, 81% growth in messages sent, chat users up 18%, social members booking twice as frequently. All of this confirms what we already know. Young travelers are searching for connection, not just accommodation. AI-powered queries now reflect exactly that same intent. Travelers are increasingly asking about who else is going, what's on, whether the crowd fits, rather than price and availability alone. Our platform is built to answer those questions.
Traditional search engines and generalist OTAs are not. Of course, the search paradigm is shifting to meet it. AI platforms can process multilayered social queries and return personalized recommendations the keyword search engines just can't simply resolve. I think as that shift progresses, the platforms with the richest social data will be the ones that AI surfaces as the authoritative answer. Looking further forward, today, we can see in a small volume, travelers use AI chatbots to research and plan trips. Over time, they will ask agents to do that for them with social intent, with complex queries like the ones you see in the screen. That agent will need to synthesize social data, events, and peer recommendations all into a single response. We have that data. Our competitors do not. Next slide.
The reason we can answer those complex social queries and our competitors cannot is because we have the data. We have four interconnected data loops, social member profiles, messaging, bookings, and now events. Each enriches the other. A traveler's profile informs better matching. Better matching drives more messaging. More messaging generates more booking signals. Of course, OccasionGenius adds the events layer that closes the loop, and that makes the ecosystem complete. We have the scale today to make use of that data. With 3.4 million social members, 16 million chat messages, 17 million bookings from social members since launch, and the total interaction data set is order of magnitudes greater than that when you think about people searching on the site and clicking before they decide to make a decision.
OccasionGenius will add a proprietary events layer across 750 cities updated daily. No scraper can replicate that. No aggregator has access to it. It is exclusively ours. Finally, this data compounds. More users generate richer data. Richer data drives better matching. Better matching attracts more users. On one level, I resist framing this as a moat because a moat always sounds defensive. This is a growth engine for us. The more the AI era rewards social intelligence in travel, the more valuable our data set will become. If we move to the next slide, please. Whilst the agent landscape is definitely evolving, let me explain how I think the AI agent future is gonna work in practice for Hostelworld.
When a traveler asks an AI agent a complex social query, like the Barcelona festival example, we believe that we will get cited because we have the structured machine-readable social data that answers. Now we're working on MCP connectivity, marking up our pages using schema.org guidelines and other technical standards to ensure that when agents answer travel queries, Hostelworld is the authoritative source. We expect the response from the agent will include a deep link with a clear call to action, book through Hostelworld or buy a social pass. Here's kind of the critical point. An AI agent can book a bed on Booking o r Expedia or Trip.com, but it cannot grant that traveler access to our social network. The chat, the profiles, the event RSVPs, the peer matching, that is only available through the Hostelworld app.
We believe that agents are going to become the discovery mechanism that funnels users into our monetized entry point, a booking or a Social Pass, and once they're in, they join the social flywheel. We own the social experience. No OTA, no AI platform, and no aggregator can replicate it or replace it. Moving to the next slide, please. This slide really brings together the three distinct ways we believe that AI is gonna work in our favor. The first is a number of points that I've talked about. Smarter social matching. AI-powered recommendations across profiles, messagings, and events drive deeper engagement. That richer engagement generates richer data, which improves matching still further. Better matching increases booking frequency, Social Pass uptake, and word-of-mouth acquisition. This becomes a self-reinforcing cycle that our competitors cannot run because they don't have the social data.
The second block is all about agent connectivity and what we think about in terms of building the new front door. The MCP connectivity will go live in the second quarter 2026. We are working on marking up all of our pages to schema.org guidelines throughout the year. The model here is that when agents answer those complex social travel queries, Hostelworld will be cited as the source, and users will arrive at a monetized entry point. Now I would say how the economics of agent platforms will ultimately evolve, it's still an open question. They may charge connected platforms to be cited or the model may develop differently. What is clear is that rich structured social data is the prerequisite for being part of that ecosystem at all, and that is what we are building. The third block is the operational intelligence layer.
We, like many other companies, are embedding AI platforms across our marketing, product, engineering, and supply workflows in 2026. Of course, we are a focused asset-light business, and we believe that AI is going to let a smaller team of 300 people like ours operate with the analytical depth of a much larger organization and a far greater speed. This is what we are already seeing in the company. Of course, because we are asset-light, most of those efficiency gains should drop down directly to EBITDA. Next slide, please. This slide sets out our progress against the financial framework we committed to at the Capital Markets Day in April 2025, and it gives you our confidence in 2026. On revenue, Q1 2026 generated revenue is up more than 12% year-on-year.
Commission rates at 17.7% in Q1 2026, up from 15% in Q1 2025. Elevate is working, and the drop-through on that commission improvement is high. Budget accommodation is already live for iOS English language users across 18,000 destinations, with cross-platform rollout aggressively underway. Then finally, Social Pass revenue is growing with distribution expansion in progress. On margins, marketing as a percent of generated revenue is below 50% in Q1 2026, which is within our guided 45%-50% range. The investment ramp that we talked about during 2025 is largely complete by year-end 2025. We operate an asset-light scalable platform, and the model is designed so that top-line growth converts efficiently into bottom-line profit. The CMD targets remain our targets.
Low double-digit revenue growth year-on-year, marketing at 45%-50% of revenue, adjusted EBITDA margin above 20% and adjusted free cash flow conversion of approximately 70%. Of course, against an FY 2025 net revenue base of EUR 93.8, these targets represent a meaningful step up in earnings. If we move to the final slide, please. Let me close with three things that I want you to take away. First, 2026 is definitely on track. Q1 generated revenue up more than 12% year-on-year, and that's before the full scaling of budget accommodation and Social Passes. Commission rates at 17.7%, marketing efficiency within our guidance range. The step-up is driven by initiatives that are already live. Second, we are a stronger, more differentiated platform. Three revenue streams when there was one.
An addressable market that is materially larger. A social network that is compounding with 81% growth in messages sent. Social members booking twice as frequently as non-members. The OccasionGenius completes the fourth data loop in the second quarter of 2026. Finally, AI strengthens our position. It doesn't threaten it. Our 3.4 million social members, 16 million chat messages, and 17 million bookings from social members are precisely the data that AI agents need to answer the complex social travel queries our target customers are already beginning to ask. An AI agent can book a bed anywhere, but only Hostelworld can grant access to the social network, and we believe that is a durable compounding advantage.
We said at the Capital Markets Day that we were building a social travel platform for the AI era, and I think in 2025 we've largely built it, and in 2026, we now scale it. Thank you for listening to Caroline and I today running through the presentation. We would be very happy to take questions. David has been collating the questions during the presentation and will now summarize those, and we'll be happy to answer them.
Thank you, Gary. Good morning, everybody. We've got lots of questions to get through, so we'll jump straight in. Caroline, I'll start with you first. What more can you tell us about trading trends that we've seen in Q1, particularly with respect to volume, ABV, pricing trends? Are we seeing any impact of the war in the Middle East across your business globally or regionally?
Okay. Yeah, great question. Very pleasingly, as Gary mentioned, we continue to see double-digit revenue growth in Q1. This is our second consecutive quarter now of double-digit revenue growth, which is really fantastic. Booking volume growth circa at the end of Q1 will expect to be circa 3%, revenue greater than 12%. Most pleasingly of all, of course, is that performance is all within the marketing investment range that we've guided to the market, so within that 45%-50%. Even just focusing on that for a moment, of course, the marketing investment in H2 and in particular in Q4 were very different to what they had been at the first half of 2025 when we really saw that spike in CPC inflation in Q1 2025.
Bringing it back to Q1 2026, so we're seeing double-digit revenue growth. We're seeing strong performance in ABV across all regions. Of course, that is aided by our marketplace monetization tool, Elevate. Commission rates, Gary said 17.7% ahead of where we were expecting. I think as we think of the remainder of 2026, and what we'll expect from Elevate, 17.7% is a good assumption for our full-year commission rate number. We are seeing the uptake in Elevate across all regions. It's not geographically concentrated in one particular region. It's across the board. ABV is also aided by bed price inflation. Again, we're seeing bed price inflation across the board, across all regions. We're also seeing a favorable geo mix.
After a very long protracted period of geo mix being a headwind and impacting revenue top line for Hostelworld, we are now in positive geo mix territory, and that's really driven by the strong performance in Europe. Europe, continuing to grow from both a volume perspective and also from a value perspective because of the expansion in ABV. Plenty of ABV tailwinds. We've talked about Elevate. We've talked about bed price inflation. We've talked about positive geo mix. Some headwind from U.S. Dollar. Just, we do have exposure when we convert our U.S. Dollar-denominated bookings into euro, our reporting currency. ABV very, very well. Of course, then when we look at regional performances, Europe has seen strong growth this quarter. We're very pleased with how Europe is doing. We're getting volume growth. We're getting revenue growth.
Of course, there is some impact off the back of the conflict. We are a global platform. We have customer demand across all regions. You'll have seen earlier in the presentation I spoke to, you know, where our customers come from. 40% of our customers come from Europe, 20% come from the U.K., 20% come from North America and Canada. That's 80% of our origination. Then destination-wise, Europe is our biggest market, followed by Asia, and then LatAm, Oceania, et cetera. The impact of the conflict for us in the Middle East is less from a source consumer perspective or even as a destination perspective. It really is, as Gary mentioned in his outlook statement, the traveler corridor.
Middle East being a typical layover for long-haul international travel. We've seen some softness in Oceania and Asia as a result of that. Initially, cancellations for long-haul long lead time bookings into Asia and Oceania had increased. That has since normalized. We're seeing normal levels of cancellations in those regions. We are seeing some booking softness. However, that booking softness is more than offset by strength and momentum in Europe, which of course has a much higher bed price than Asia. Approximately 3x greater than Asia. That gives an overview of what we're seeing in Q1 and the impact of the conflict on our numbers.
Thank you, Caroline. Gary, I'll turn to you for our next question, which is about 3PI and Social Passes. A few parts to it, if that's okay. Maybe firstly set out the thinking around the price point for Social Passes and the mix contribution we expect over the medium term from both 3PI and Social Passes. Are we seeing anything notable from a customer behavior point of view at how our customers are interacting with these products compared to the base product? Are we seeing a weighting towards new customers, existing customers, or notable changes in behavior?
Okay. I'll talk about Social Passes first and then.
Okay
Perhaps you can reiterate the question around 3PI for clarity. When we launched Social Passes, we'd done quite a lot of consumer research to work out where the elasticity was. As you'll see today, the weekly pass is EUR 4.99, the monthly pass is EUR 9.99, and then we have a three-monthly at EUR 19.99, and then an annual at EUR 59.99. What we have actually seen in practice, which has been very encouraging, is, you know, on the one level, the mix is skewed very much two-thirds week, 1/3 month. But what we are also seeing is that consumers appear to be using these as a low-cost means of sampling the social network.
When we look at the new customers whose first purchase on the platform has been a Social Pass, they have never made a booking with us. When we have a look at 30 days after the pass expiry, we're seeing a notable number of those convert into accommodation bookers, which is a super encouraging signal. In relation to the pricing, we have not done any pricing optimization as yet. You know, the right way to do that is to get a little bit more volume in the products and then test different price points, see what the conversion looks like. Also look at pricing at differentials that we can do on currencies. You know, all of that optimization is to come. I think the key thing is Q2 is the point where we start scaling the marketing activation for Social Passes.
Later in the year, we will look at pricing optimization. The initial results in terms of new customers whose first purchase is a Social Pass converting into accommodation bookers is very encouraging. More to come at interims.
Thanks, Gary. Just returning to the question on 3PI, two parts to that. One is over the medium term, what proportion of our overall mix do you think that could get to? Then secondly, you know, are we seeing any notable customer behavior trends with respect to 3PI? Is it a product which so far seems to be more weighted towards new customers or existing customers?
Yeah. The last question, the new customers at the moment for 3PI is about 13%. In terms of how I think it'll evolve, so we launched 3PI on iOS, English language users, 50 destinations in December. That's already been scaled to 18,000 destinations. We will, through the year, expand that onto Android, web, all languages, 18,000. So, you know, increasingly, the effects which we are already seeing in Q1, albeit in a very, you know, modest fashion, we expect that to scale through the year, and we'll have more to say at interims. In terms of customer behavior, as I said, new customers 13%, but of course, that's on, you know, over a relatively limited surface area.
I'd add. The usage of the social platform is about the same as if you had booked a directly contracted property with us. Cancellation rates approximately the same. Where will it get to in the future? Our current customer cohort that we have is very much focused on youth travelers. They go to, I'm gonna say a well-trodden path of cities, whether it's Amsterdam or London or Paris or Bangkok or, you know, Sydney, Melbourne, so on and so forth. The more that we introduce options for those customers in a wider range of destinations, and they see that they can use the social network in destinations which are expanded versus our original footprint, I would expect that to grow. It's too early for us to be able to say what the long-term growth and mix of directly contracted versus indirectly contracted.
What we feel very confident based on the signals that we're seeing so far is the double-digit revenue number on a full year basis, comprised of directly contracted, indirectly contracted, and Social Passes.
Thank you, Gary. I'm just gonna stay with you for one more question, and that's on our marketing efficiency. Given what we've talked about with Social Passes and 3PI and our longer term ambition, how do you see that impacting our marketing performance? Do we still stay with the guidance range of 45%-50%, or do you see any changes to that?
I feel very comfortable staying with the range 45%-50%. Probably a point that is worth stating is if you looked at full year 2025, and you sort of normalized for the cost inflation that we've seen, you know, in the first part of the year that we highlighted in April, our marketing as a percent of revenue would have been around 46%. It would have been flat 2024 and 2025. Around the 46%. You know, in the second half, it was around 46% again. As we look into 2026, we now have an evolving customer portfolio where already we are seeing customers that come through one entry point, whether it's directly contracted, indirectly contracted or Social Passes.
You know, we're already seeing that customers are floating from one product line to another product line. I think that the longer term marketing is a balance of two things. One, we are very laser-focused on growing our customer base and growing our revenue. Similarly, as we have done over the years, is we use analytics to be able to predict what these new customers are going to be able to provide for us. Although, you know, that number may float up in any one given quarter, it is because we are investing in new customers which we expect to contribute to revenue in future time periods. I'd rather keep that revenue range, or sorry, that marketing as a percentage of revenue range around 45%-50%, because it allows us the latitude to invest in further growth.
Thank you, Gary. Conscious that we've just gone past 10 o'clock, but there's lots of questions coming through, so we'll just try and squeeze in two more. Caroline, I'll turn to you with this question, and it's about capital allocation. Clearly a very busy year of delivery on the capital allocation front in 2025, but obviously people want to know what's next. In that context, what comments can you give around how people should think about the mix of debt, dividend, buyback, M&A through 2026, 2027?
Yeah, exactly. Look, the balance sheet is in a good place. We finished the year with EUR 12.2 million of cash on the balance sheet, net debt of EUR 1.6 million. We are very asset light business, cash generative. Since the year-end number of a EUR 1.6 million net debt position, we've moved into a net cash position as at the end of this quarter, we're back to net cash again. Of course, we have debt on the balance sheet, EUR 10.3 million with financing, which was drawn down to fund the acquisition of OccasionGenius. That has an interest rate of 2% over Euribor, so a very competitive commercial terms with that. Paying down the debt will be a key priority. It's a three-year facility.
We have no early repayment penalty, so we can accelerate the early repayment of that facility. We also have an outstanding liability to Irish Revenue for payroll taxes that we warehoused during COVID. There's EUR 3.5 million outstanding on that, 0% interest. We could choose again to early repay that. We have substantially completed the share buyback that we announced last year, a GBP 5 million sterling share buyback program. GBP 3.9 million of shares were repurchased in 2025 and subsequently canceled. That program now is substantially complete at the end of this quarter. Of course, last year, we reinstated the dividend. We paid a dividend to shareholders in September. We've announced our final dividend for 2025 this morning as well, of course, which will be paid in May of 2026.
Bringing that all together, that gives us great optionality when we think of the future and uses of cash. Of course, as we said at the Capital Markets Day, one of the key priorities will be continuing to invest in the core platform in the business, product development, looking to expand our reach, looking to expand our total addressable market, becoming a leader in the youth travel marketplace. How do you attain that? You attain that through broadening your product portfolio. That will always be a key priority for us. Second, of course, early repay the debt potentially. Third, we have reinstated our dividend policy, so that will continue. Beyond that, it's really looking at is there a compelling opportunity out there that could further drive momentum and growth for Hostelworld through an inorganic acquisition.
We of course acquired OccasionGenius at the end of 2025 in the last quarter. Our focus and efforts are on the integration of that acquisition. That's our primary focus. I think, look, our balance sheet's in a good place. We have a strong balance sheet. It gives us optionality via strong cash reserves, and that's a great place to be in, particularly when the macro looks a little uncertain at the moment, albeit we, of course, are limited in our exposure to the conflict in that region.
Thank you, Caroline. Gary, I'll turn to you with our final question, and it relates to the social network. 2025, clearly a year of impressive growth in the network in both depth and breadth. We can see that in the growth in social members, we can see it in the growth across messages sent and so on. As we look into 2026, what level of growth do you think we can expect there and what types of changes can we see? Particularly, you know, what kind of growth do you think can be powered by AI and OccasionGenius?
I'll answer that in three parts. The social network is really fueled by network effects. It's a flywheel. What I mean by that is every new user who uses the social network generates data. That data helps us make better recommendations for all users, and that in turn attracts more users to the network. It is a classic network effect. Now, if I look at the numbers, 81% year-over-year growth in messages sent and 53% year-over-year growth in messages per unique users, that's quite a tough call in terms of this year. That being said, we are continuing to see in Q1 impressive growth on all of those metrics. In relation to OccasionGenius, second part of the answer.
OccasionGenius is unique in that it has data about events, both free and paid, in 750 cities by the end of this quarter that is updated daily. That adds on another very significant layer of proprietary data to the dataset that we already have. In relation to the third part of the answer, AI. AI is already fueling huge growth in the network, as evidenced by the numbers year -over- year 2025. I expect that to compound with the OccasionGenius data, but I would also say, AI also opens up a lot of very interesting product feature possibilities on the social network. You should expect to see us continue to innovate on what the social network can offer our customers. We will say a little bit more about that at Interims in terms of roadmap.
Certainly by full year, you should expect to see some very exciting features on the social network. It is the linchpin of our strategy, grounded in the fact that 18-30-year-olds, you know, in the main are looking for people to hang out with and fun things to do. That's exactly what our social network with our proprietary data and AI provides.
Thanks, Gary. That concludes the Q&A. I'll just hand back to you, to close out the call.
Thank you for spending the time with us today. I hope you're as excited as we are on the journey that we have. I think 2025 was very much the year of investment, where we transformed our business from being, you know, in 2024, a fixed addressable market hostel OTA with a static commission rate and an interesting and fun app-based chat social network. Now we have a much larger addressable market with three growing revenue streams and a compounding social network powered by AI. We definitely believe it's future-proof, given that this is proprietary data only available on our platform.
If you want to use the social network, then you have to download the app, and you have to enter by one of our monetized entry points, which is either a Social Pass or making a booking, which makes us future-proof in the agentic AI era that's coming. An exciting journey for us and the rest of the Hostelworld team, and we look forward to telling you more about it at interims. Thank you very much for your time.