Duff on Hospitality Law

Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending February 10, 2023, is below.  This past week saw the beginning of quarterly earnings releases by the major platforms, with Expedia and its meta search platform, Trivago, being the first.  Expect more details about these 4^th quarter releases in future updates.  Enjoy.

• • Expedia’s Loyalty Program Posts Strong Gains.  While Expedia posted reasonably strong fourth quarter and full year (2022) financial results this past week (see attached earnings release transcript for more detail), it was the growth in Expedia’s loyalty program that garnered much of the attention.  During the fourth quarter, the number of Expedia customers who became loyalty program members grew by 60% over the same period in 2019.  With those increases, Expedia entered 2023 with more active loyalty program users than ever (more than 10% higher than the previous peak).  According to Expedia CEO, Peter Kern,  the number of Expedia loyalty program members and number of active Expedia app users (which also grew over the past quarter) are the two primary factors that Expedia uses when evaluating progress against its goal of maintaining long term its highest-value customers. 
  • Trivago Targets Direct Bookings.  In recent correspondence accompanying its fourth quarter and full year (2022) earnings release, Trivago highlighted its ongoing efforts to grow hotel direct bookings.  According to Trivago, direct bookable rates are now available on the meta search site for properties that receive 50% of click outs (and increase from 38% prior to its direct booking push).  Trivago hopes to get that number to over 80% by the end of the year.  Direct bookings are now possible in 8 of Trivago’s markets. 

Have a great week everyone.