Travelers booking flights and hotels from Expedia in a co-branded feature in the Afterpay app can now choose to pay in four interest-free payments over six weeks, Expedia announced.
25.08.2023 - 14:13 / skift.com / Dennis Schaal
Rumors have surfaced on social media that Expedia Group would announce this Thursday during its fourth quarter earnings call that customers would no longer be able to book vacation rentals on Expedia.com — but that’s not going to happen because it would be self-sabotage.
The rumors would have you believe that Expedia Group would push its Vrbo vacation rental brand as the only place to book homes within the Expedia Group orbit, unlike today where you can book them on brands such as Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Orbitz, eBookers, Wotif, Trivago, and Vrbo.com.
A Vrbo-only vacation rental trip planning and booking policy would deprive Expedia Group of all of those reservations and stays coming through that assortment of other in-house brands. Expedia Group, which acquired HomeAway/Vrbo in 2015 for $3.9 billion in perhaps one of its best acquisitions ever, has spent years and untold millions of dollars doing precisely the opposite of the rumors — ensuring that Vrbo’s vacation rentals could be expanded to, visible and bookable on Expedia.com and other Expedia Group brands in addition to Vrbo.
During the early stages of the pandemic when hotels were shut down, Vrbo, vacation rentals and domestic travel were the saviors within the Expedia Group portfolio. Having them bookable on Expedia.com as well as on Vrbo was a benefit.
Many of the major global online travel brands, including Booking Holdings and Airbnb, enable travelers to find short-term rentals and hotels mixed together in one place. Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel has numerous times talked about the benefits of having all accommodations types available together in one place so customers can find accommodation types of their choosing depending on their trip purposes and inclinations.
In fact, several years ago, the tabs atop Expedia.com’s homepage, and those of other online travel companies transitioned from separate “hotels” and “vacation rentals” categories to “stays” to reflect that mashup.
Expedia.com used to have separate “hotels” and “vacation rentals” tabs but today combines them in “stays.” The company has spent years laboring at different ways to combine these disparate property types but resolved to keep them together.
It is certainly possible that Expedia Group might prune some vacation rental listings, and move them from one platform to another, if the company deems that appropriate for the website or typical customer type.
But relegating vacation rental bookings to Vrbo only would be as fruitful as allowing flight bookings for Airbus aircraft only, and eschewing Boeing planes.
Forget about it.
Travelers booking flights and hotels from Expedia in a co-branded feature in the Afterpay app can now choose to pay in four interest-free payments over six weeks, Expedia announced.
To hear Expedia Group officials tell it, 2023 is shaping up as a year when lots — but not all — of the tough, behind-the-scenes tech work will have been completed, and the company will start to reap the benefits.
A research report found that Expedia Group has lost global hotel market share since the onset of the pandemic, and all of it has come from plunging business at non-core brands, such as Hotwire, eBookers, Orbitz and Travelocity.
Expedia Group has 10 consumer brands, but its marketing strategy shifted starting in late 2021 to emphasize three core brands above all others: Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo.
Five years ago, Airbnb toyed with the idea of launching a a “superguest” loyalty program, but CEO Brian Chesky seemed to shoot down the notion of a rewards program a couple of weeks ago.
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In the perennial quest to turn bargaining-hunting travelers with little brand loyalty into customers making bookings and generating revenue through paid advertising, Airbnb widened its already substantial advantage in 2022 over rivals Booking Holdings and Expedia Group.
T.J. Clark, property manager Vacasa’s new chief commercial officer, is in the proverbial hot seat, charged with reversing unacceptably high rates of homeowners leaving the platform, and increasing sales after the company laid off up to 300 sales and marketing staff and 1,000 field personnel in January.
Expedia Group executives such as CEO Peter Kern and Chairman Barry Diller have long railed against Google’s inordinate dominance in travel advertising, but now Kern is hoping that the emergence of generative AI companies and other emerging technologies may lead to diminished dependence.
Expedia Group and Mastercard are teaming to power a loyalty points redemption program that enables banks and credit unions that issue Mastercards to enable their cardholders to redeem credit card loyalty points after booking Expedia-provided trips.
Expedia Group officials hope that its Hotels.com brand, which migrated its technology to the Expedia platform last year and saw 20 percent growth in gross bookings in the first quarter of 2023, is a model for good things to come for its Vrbo vacation rental brand this year and beyond.
Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern, who’s been working on revamping the company since April 2020, said “it would’ve been impossible for the old us, three years ago,” to have been nimble enough to be among the first movers in generative AI among online travel companies.