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Skift Take
Ariane Gorin is not going to be a Peter Kern clone in her new role as Expedia Group CEO. Among her first acts was to pause the international rollout of the Group’s One Key loyalty program.
Dennis Schaal
Expedia Group is “pausing” the rollout of its new One Key loyalty program beyond the U.S. and the UK in part because of the adverse impact on its Hotels.com brand.
One Key launched a year ago, and the idea was to have a solitary loyalty program for Expedia Group’s three core brands, Expedia.com, Hotels.com and Vrbo. The plan was to introduce the loyalty scheme globally.
“Most international markets have only either Brand Expedia or Hotels.com operating at scale with limited Vrbo presence,” said Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin in her first earnings call running the show. “So we’re going to take the time to tailor our value proposition for these markets. In addition, this should minimize further near-term disruption to Hotels.com, which was the brand most impacted by One Key’s U.S. rollout.”
The Hotels.com loyalty program was simple and popular — one free night after every 10 nights booked. But Hotels.com was adversely impacted by the introduction of One Key in the U.S. and UK, officials said.
Chief Financial Officer Julie Whalen said Expedia.com was the least disrupted by the introduction of One Key, and it saw a robust 20% room nights growth in the second quarter.
Gorin described the puts and takes for Vrbo and One Key flowing out of the platform migration, which put the three core brands onto a single tech stack.
“On Vrbo, collaboration was a big – it was sort of something that was used a lot in Vrbo. And when we migrated it, the good thing was we got the trip planning collaboration onto Brand Expedia, but we lost some of the functionality in Vrbo. Now the good news is we’ve added a bunch of it back and there’s still work to be done,” Gorin said.
She said this means that the company needs to “move back” a bit when it comes to the migration or build Vrbo- and Hotels.com-specific features on top of the platform.
“Similarly with Hotels.com, when we moved to One Key, we sort of downplayed an advantage that Hotels.com had. It had a really big differentiator and its loyalty program (10 nights booked meant a free night),” Gorin said. “So the good news is that both of those brands have great brand awareness, have people who love to come back to them. But I’ve just realized it’s going to take work to get them back to where we want.”
Vrbo Not Back on Track
Vrbo has been a notable laggard in 2023 after the platform migration last year.
During the second quarter, Expedia.com saw booked room nights leap a robust 20%. Room night activity at vacation rental unit Vrbo and Hotels.com were undoubtably lower because Expedia Group’s room nights increased a mere 10% as a whole.
Officials tied some of the disparity to the company’s years-long tech platform migration that put Expedia.com, Hotels.com and Vrbo onto a common platform.
