Expedia tips

In Part I of our series on Google Travel, we analyzed the hotel distribution landscape in the U.S. by web-scraping over 5,000 hotels and their respective distribution offerings across Google’s sponsored and organic auctions.

As the year nears its end, the tourism industry is setting its sights on the buzzwords for travel in 2024. Will we still be doing revenge travel, set-jetting and workcations?

Expedia Group has been consumed with, and weighed down by, launching a new loyalty program and transitioning its three core brands — Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo — to a common tech platform. But now those tasks are behind it.

Expedia® and Jazz Fest announced today Expedia is the Official Travel Partner for the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which takes place at New Orleans’ historic Fair Grounds Race Course over eight days in April and May 2024. To make it easier for travelers to plan their trips, Expedia launched the new Jazz Fest travel hub which features city guides, travel resources and exclusive offers for One Key™ members such as hotel discounts and access to giveaways and VIP experiences. “Thousands of people travel to Jazz Fest every spring because they know nothing beats New Orleans when it comes to music, food and soul,” says Michele Rousseau, senior vice president, Global Brands at Expedia Group. “By working with Jazz Fest, Expedia gets to help ensure Jazz Fest fans get the absolute most out of their trips, whether that’s great hotel rates and discounts, or exclusive member experiences at the Festival itself.”

Over 200 top companies plan to attend Skift Aviation Forum next week. This includes household names like Aero, AirlineGeeks, American Airlines, Boeing, CLEAR, Delta, Expedia, GE Aerospace, Honeywell, Lufthansa, Oneworld, Skyscanner, and Southwest, just to name a few.

Expedia increased spending 10 times over five years to advertise vacation home rentals on Google, but the online travel agency saw no increase in traffic because the search giant has been prioritizing its own flight and hotel products. 

For one type of worker, any time outside the office is time well spent — even if they're working.

Skift Research conducted an extensive data-scraping of the Google Hotels platform to understand Google’s role in the hotel distribution landscape.

Our latest Skift Research report delves into the Google Hotels platform through extensive data scraping, using AI-powered Browse.ai and customized Python scripts to amass data from over 5,000 hotel listings in the U.S.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, October 18. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Having a mountain guide is a great way to explore the best runs a slope has to offer, but imagine if that guide was none other than legendary Olympic gold medalist Shaun White himself.

ToursByLocals has appointed Lisa Chen as its new CEO. The leadership change comes as co-founder and former CEO Paul Melhus steps into the role of Executive Chairman of the Board.

Last week ended with some Hopper news, and this week was filled with it. Read below for the latest on one of the most-love consumer travel apps and its challenges and changes with partners, consumers, and more. 

Expedia made a major move earlier this summer when it ended its relationship with online travel agency Hopper.

Hopper founder and CEO Fred Lalonde said Expedia Group’s decision to abruptly remove its hotel inventory in July was driven by competition, and claimed it was Expedia that ended up suffering.

Expedia may have cracked the code to successful travel in 2024.

Expedia Group caused a stir this summer when it cut ties with the growing online travel app Hopper.  Peter Kern, Expedia’s CEO, stood by the decision onstage Wednesday at the Skift Global Forum during a session moderated by Skift executive editor Dennis Schaal. Expedia Group owns brands including Expedia.com, Vrbo, Hotels.com, Travelocity, and Orbitz.

Two months after Expedia Group abruptly stopped providing Hopper with hotels and vacation rentals, Hopper announced Wednesday that it struck deals with two hotel bedbanks — Hotelbeds and WebBeds — to add more than 700,000 properties to its roster.

Expedia Group has announced new features and tools for travelers to get the most out of their booking experience while also removing some of the stress of planning travel. With Trip Planner, travelers can collaborate with friends and family on their group travel. Users can also enjoy new AI tools to help make the travel experience better.

The last days of summer may still feel like they’re lingering, but the time to start thinking about holiday flights is now. 

Traveling this summer often came with major sticker shock, especially for international getaways. But with the fall travel season upon us, both temperatures and prices are mellowing out, as a mix of global cities—some surprising—are arising as choice destinations.