Expedia Group Stock

Expedia Group, Inc. (Expedia Group) operates as an online travel company.

The company leverages its supply portfolio, platform and technology capabilities across an extensive portfolio of consumer brands, and provide solutions to the company’s business partners, to empower travelers to efficiently research, plan, book and experience travel.

As of December 31, 2023, the company had over 3 million lodging properties available, including over 2 million online bookable alternative accommodations listings through Vrbo, over 940,000 hotels and alternative accommodations through the company’s other brands, over 500 airlines, packages, rental cars, cruises, and insurance, as well as activities and experiences.

Travel suppliers distribute and market products via the company’s apps, desktop and mobile offerings, as well as through alternative distribution channels, the company’s business partnerships and its call centers in order to reach the company’s extensive global audience. In addition, the company’s advertising and media businesses help other businesses, primarily travel providers, reach a large multi-platform audience of travelers around the globe.

The company’s portfolio of brands, operated and organized by reportable segment are as follows:

B2C

The company’s B2C segment provides a full range of travel and advertising services to the company’s worldwide customers through recognized consumer brands that target a variety of customer segments and geographic regions with tailored offerings. The company’s portfolio of B2C brands include:

Brand Expedia: Brand Expedia is a leading full-service online travel brand in a wide range of countries around the world offering a wide selection of travel products and services.

Hotels.com: Hotels.com focuses on lodging accommodations.

Vrbo: Vrbo operates an online marketplace for the alternative accommodations industry. The Vrbo portfolio includes the alternative accommodation brand, Vrbo, which operates localized websites around the world, as well as other regional brands.

The company has multiple other brands, including but not limited to, Orbitz, Travelocity, ebookers and Wotif Group.

While the company maintains a large portfolio of consumer brands, the company puts the majority of its marketing efforts towards its three core consumer brands: Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo.

B2B

The company’s B2B segment fuels a wide range of travel and non-travel companies, including airlines, offline travel agents, online retailers, corporate travel management and financial institutions, who leverage its leading travel technology and tap into the company’s diverse supply to augment their offerings and market Expedia Group rates and availabilities to their travelers.

Expedia Group's B2B partners can benefit from the company’s technology and supply in the way that best suits their business. This includes connecting to Expedia Group's travel content through the company’s API, Rapid; adopting one of the company’s customized white label or co-branded ecommerce template solutions; or a powerful agent booking tool, Expedia Travel Affiliate Agent Program (‘TAAP’). Prior to its sale on November 1, 2021, the company’s B2B segment also included Egencia, which was the company’s full-service travel management company. The company also offers an ‘optimized distribution’ product to help hotel suppliers distribute wholesale rates through authorized channels. The company’s B2B segment also includes room nights, gross bookings, and associated economics from its lodging supply agreement the company entered into with GBT in conjunction with the sale of Egencia.

Trivago

The company’s trivago segment generates advertising revenue primarily from sending referrals to online travel companies and travel service providers from its hotel metasearch websites. trivago is the company’s majority-owned hotel metasearch company, based in Dusseldorf, Germany. The online platform gives travelers access to price comparisons from hundreds of booking websites for millions of hotels and other accommodations. Officially launched in 2005, trivago is a leading global brand in hotel search and can be accessed worldwide.

Business Strategy

The company’s focus is to leverage its brand, supply, and platform technology strength; to provide greater services and value to the company’s travelers, suppliers and business partners; and to build longer-lasting direct relationships with the company’s customers.

The key elements of the company’s strategy are to leverage brand and supply strength to power the travel ecosystem; and leverage the company’s platform to deliver more rapid product innovation resulting in better traveler experiences.

Business Models

The company makes travel products and services available both on a stand-alone and package basis, primarily through the following business models: the merchant model, the agency model and the advertising model.

Merchant Model

Under the merchant model, the company facilitates the booking of hotel rooms, alternative accommodations, airline seats, car rentals and destination services from the company’s travel suppliers and the company is the merchant of record for such bookings. For example, the company provides travelers access to book hotel room reservations through the company’s contracts with lodging suppliers, which provide the company with rates and availability information for rooms but for which the company has no control over the rooms and do not bear inventory risk. The company’s travelers pay the company for merchant hotel transactions prior to departing on their trip, generally when they book the reservation. The majority of the company’s merchant transactions relate to lodging bookings.

Agency Model

Under the agency model, the company facilitates travel bookings and act as the agent in the transaction, passing reservations booked by the traveler to the relevant travel provider. The company receives commissions or ticketing fees from the travel supplier and/or traveler. The company records revenue on air transactions when the traveler books the transaction, as the company does not typically provide significant post booking services to the traveler and payments due to and from air carriers are typically due at the time of ticketing. Additionally, the company generally records agency revenue from the hotel when the stayed night occurs as the company provides post booking services to the traveler and, thus consider the stay as when the company’s performance obligation is satisfied. The majority of the company’s agency gross bookings relate to air bookings.

Advertising Model

Under the advertising model, the company offers travel and non-travel advertisers access to a potential source of incremental traffic and transactions through the company’s various media and advertising offerings across several of the company’s transaction-based websites, as well as on the company’s majority-owned metasearch site, trivago.

The company’s Expedia Traveler Preference (‘ETP’) program offers, for participating hotels, customers the choice of whether to pay Expedia Group in advance under the company’s merchant model (Expedia Collect) or pay at the hotel at the time of the stay under the agency model (Hotel Collect).

In addition, through various of the company’s Expedia Group-branded and other multi-product websites, travelers can dynamically assemble multiple component travel packages for a specified period at a lower price as compared to booking each component separately. Travelers typically select packages based on the total package price or by purchasing one product and receiving a discounted price to attach additional products. The use of the merchant model enables the company to make certain multi-product purchases available at prices lower than those charged on an individual component basis without impacting their other pricing models. In addition, the company offers pre-assembled package offerings, further broadening its scope of products and services to travelers. The company expects the package product to continue to be marketed primarily using the merchant model.

Marketing and Promotions

The company’s marketing programs are intended to build and maintain the value of the company’s B2C brands, drive traffic and ultimately bookings while optimizing ongoing traveler acquisition costs.

The company’s marketing channels primarily include brand advertising through online and offline channels, loyalty programs, mobile apps, search engine marketing and optimization, as well as metasearch, social media, direct and/or personalized traveler communications on the company’s websites, as well as through direct e-mail communication with the company’s travelers. The company’s marketing programs and initiatives include promotional offers, such as coupons, as well as seasonal or periodic special offers from the company’s travel suppliers based on its supplier relationships. Most recently, the company unified its existing loyalty programs into one global rewards platform called One Key spanning all the company’s major brands, which launched in the United States in July 2023 with additional markets to follow.

The company also makes the use of affiliate marketing. Several of the company’s branded websites receive bookings from consumers who have clicked through to the respective websites through links posted on affiliate partner websites. In exchange for this traffic, the company pays the affiliate partner a commission.

Travel Suppliers

The company makes travel products and services available from a variety of hotel companies, property owners and managers, large and small commercial airlines, car rental companies, cruise lines, destination service providers, and other travel partners. The company seeks to build and maintain long-term, strategic relationships with travel suppliers and global distribution system (‘GDS’) partners. An important component of the success of the company’s business depends on its ability to maintain the company’s existing, as well as build new, relationships with travel suppliers and GDS partners.

The company strives to deliver value to its travel supply partners through a wide range of innovative, targeted merchandising and promotional strategies designed to generate consumer demand and increase their revenue. The company’s strategic account managers and local hotel market managers work directly with travel suppliers to optimize the exposure of their travel products and brands through the company’s points of sale, including participation in need-based, seasonal and event-driven promotions and experimentation within the new channels the company are building.

The company developed proprietary technology to assist both hotel and alternative accommodation suppliers in managing and marketing their supply, whether this is direct through the company’s proprietary central reservation tools or through third-party channel managers. The company’s ‘direct connect’ technology allows suppliers to upload information about available products and services and rates directly from their central reservation systems and dynamically manage reservations and traveler needs through the company’s messaging and chat platforms. The company also offers an ‘Optimized Distribution’ product to help hotel suppliers distribute wholesale rates through authorized channels. The company’s suite of white label website offerings power hotel, and package bookings on suppliers' own websites.

Vrbo's alternative accommodation listing services offers the company’s supply partners a set of tools to help them manage an availability calendar, respond to customer inquiries, edit the content of a property listing, as well as provide various other services to manage reservations or drive incremental sales volume.

Distribution Partners: The company’s relationships with GDSs primarily relate to its air business. The company uses Amadeus and Sabre as the company’s GDS segment providers in order to ensure the widest possible supply of content for the company’s travelers.

Regulation

The company’s businesses are subject to regulation by the U.S. Department of Transportation and must comply with various rules and regulations governing the provision of air transportation, including those relating to advertising and accessibility.

Additionally, the company must comply with an expanding array of international laws and regulations aimed at online businesses, including the European Union’s Digital Services Act and DAC7, which impose new information gathering and reporting requirements, as well as obligations to respond to inquiries about website content.

The company is also subject to consumer protection, privacy and consumer data, payments, labor, economic and trade sanction programs, tax, and anti-trust and competition laws and regulations around the world that are not specific to the travel industry. For example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) came into force in January 2023 and applies enhanced data protection requirements in the state of California similar to those that have existed since 2018 under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Competition

The company faces intense competition from other OTAs and alternative accommodation providers in many regions, such as Booking Holdings (through its Booking.com, Priceline.com and Agoda.com brands), Airbnb, and Trip.com. Airbnb, Booking Holdings and other providers of alternative accommodations provide an alternative to hotel rooms and compete with alternative accommodation properties available through Expedia Group brands, including Vrbo. The company also faces intense competition from Google and other search engines.

History

The company was founded in 1996. It was incorporated in 2005. The company was formerly known as Expedia, Inc. and changed its name to Expedia Group, Inc. in 2018.