By Maria Armental

Online travel giant Booking Holdings Inc. swung to a loss in the latest period and posted the worst annual profit performance in more than a decade as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the travel industry.

The parent company of Kayak, Priceline, OpenTable and others on Wednesday said the dollar value of travel services booked by customers, less cancellations, dropped 65% to $7.3 billion in the December quarter.

"The travel environment continued to be challenging through the fourth quarter of 2020 and into January 2021 as

COVID-19 case counts remained very high and travel restrictions were reimposed in many parts of the world," Chief Executive Glenn Fogel said in a statement, adding that the company had seen some improvement in booking trends in recent weeks.

Overall, Booking Holdings reported a $1645 loss for the quarter. On a per share basis, the loss was $4.02, or an adjusted profit of 57 cents.

Revenue for the quarter fell to $1.24 billion from $3.34 billion a year earlier.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected a loss of about $231 million, or $5.71 a share, or an adjusted loss of $4.28 a share, and $1.2 billion in revenue.

Booking Holdings ended 2020 at a $59 million profit on $6.8 billion in revenue, down from a $4.87 billion profit and $15.07 billion in revenue a year earlier.

Write to Maria Armental at maria.armental@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

02-24-21 1629ET