Traveling online this week
It’s another earnings season, so online travel companies like AirbnbAnd Expedia And Tripadvisor Facts are occasionally presented in a way that is misleading – or at least in a way that seems very positive.
Airbnb productivity
Airbnb officials twice mentioned in their discussion last week with financial analysts about 2022 earnings that their roster of 6,800 employees at the end of 2022 was 5 percent lower than it was during pre-pandemic 2019, but Airbnb revenue increased 75 percent. to reach $8.4 billion.
This means a significant increase in revenue per employee these days.
However, what Airbnb executives didn’t mention was that at the end of 2022 Airbnb “relied on a global network of approximately 11,000 third-party workers to handle the vast majority of our community support contacts,” as stated in its annual financial report. . filing.
As with the size of its full-time workforce, which Airbnb cut by 25 percent in May 2020, the company similarly terminated several contract workers, a handful of whom took over customer service at that time. Airbnb has not disclosed how many third-party contract workers it has added in the meantime, and how that has affected the productivity numbers the company is proud of.
US Expedia something
Expedia often talks about how it performs in the United States, its largest market, but it rarely talks about “Expedia US,” as it did seven times in its fourth-quarter earnings call earlier this month, as if Expedia US was a new division or Separate brand.
Expedia has sought to showcase the performance of the Expedia brand in the United States because it has intentionally given short attention in marketing to some other geographies around the world and deemphasized some non-core brands as well.
Expedia US said its loyalty numbers jumped 300% in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2019, and it has nearly 60% of engaged app users.
However, there’s no word on how the loyalty program jumped or declined and the app’s engaged user numbers on a global basis.
Overall, some of that uptick in the US was dwarfed by poor performance overseas, so Expedia has been taking a big shot at the stats it presented up front.
“Of course, when you look at our overall B2C (business-to-consumer) numbers, the accelerated performance of Expedia US was largely offset by the deliberate lack of focus on some of the smaller, non-core brands or declining in certain geographies where we didn’t have The right model and, of course, the much-discussed technical migration, which required significant work and like all migrations resulted in some friction in the short term,” said Expedia Group’s Peter Kern.
But Expedia faces challenges even at home in the United States. a Transformation Research A survey of American travelers found that Expedia’s U.S.-affiliated websites saw a 10-point drop in stock, down from 59 percent OTA [online travel agency] Bookings in 2020 to 49 percent in 2022.”
Booking.com Seemingly behind some Expedia weaknesses.
The Skift Research report found that “the most shocking finding, in our survey data, is that Booking.com has overtaken the most used booking site in the United States in 2022.” “Breakfasts were #1 in 2020 and 2021 with Booking.com #2.”
This would be an upsetting result for Expedia in its home country.
Metasearch bounced back from Tripadvisor in the US
Hotel search for hotels is an important part of Tripadvisor’s core business, and the company revealed last week that revenue for the feature only declined in 2022 to 85 percent from 2019 levels.
The company also said that its U.S. metasearch revenue — unlike its global search revenue — achieved “parity” in 2022 with 2019 numbers, and was accelerating as it heads into 2023.
What parity means isn’t precisely defined but, hey, fair enough.
Briefly
Section 230 challenges
The US Supreme Court is considering a case that has the potential to upend online travel in unexpected ways. The case revolves around a challenge to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which for several years has given online platforms in the US broad liability protections for review and video content they host created by third parties. A decision to repeal parts of Section 230 could change the business models of many travel and technology companies. CNBC
Trivago and Tripadvisor Metasearch fell behind
Is MetaSearch dead? Hardly, just ask Google. But two of the sector’s weaker public companies, Trivago and Tripadvisor, saw their meta-search numbers at idle levels compared to other sectors in 2022. Skift
Generative AI Problems from Tripadvisor
Can you think of a more intuitive application for generative AI to associate itself with than creating a tour of the destination? Tripadvisor’s transformation strategy includes creating new trip planning tools that differ from the competition. Will generative AI make this more difficult or, on the other hand, create a greater revenue stream for Tripadvisor as the licensor of its hotel reviews content? skift
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