Every One of Expedia Group's 23 Brands, Explained

Showing that names mean something, in March Expedia Inc. became Expedia Group. The switch came a month after the Priceline Group rebranded to Booking Holdings.

Expedia Group is the number two global online travel player, behind Booking Holdings, and booked $10 billion in revenue in 2017. Below, Skift presents an explainer about Expedia Group's brand portfolio.

We show how Expedia Group has positioned each of its brands based on edited company statements. Then we share our Skift Take on how these brands truly operate and fit into the online universe.

Most of the brands — which number 23 or so, depending on how you count them — are consumer brands. We include business-to-business brands, too, but leave out joint ventures.

Online Travel Agencies

Expedia.comExpedia Group Take: "Expedia.com is one of the world's largest full-service travel brands. It aims to provide the widest selection of vacation destinations, affordable airfares, hotel deals, car rentals, cruise deals, and in-destination activities, attractions, and services."

Skift Take: It has been a while since Expedia ran TV ads with the equally memorable and irritating "dot coooom" jingle. However, its pitch has remained the same, namely, to be a generic full-service travel agency. Expedia.com woos the average consumer who wants to build the blocks of their trip in one place and wants a single company to call if something goes wrong. A caveat, though: While Expedia.com may be available in 33 countries, too much of its revenue and gross bookings continue to be U.S. domestic, as the company would admit.

Hotels.comExpedia Group Take: "With hundreds of thousands of places to stay around the world and 90 local websites in 41 languages, Hotels.com has it all."

Skift Take: We strongly suspect that Captain Obvious, the star of Hotels.com TV ads, hasn't effectively made Hotels.com a household name the way the Trivago Guy and associates have helped Trivago. The brand has instead thrived on the word-of-mouth popularity of its rewards program, which has an admirably simple message of "book-10-nights-get-one-free." As for its mobile app, we're still waiting for broad availability of promised features, such as keyless entry at many hotel chains.

Vacation Rentals and Hotel Price-Comparison Engines

HomeAway, VRBO, Bedandbreakfast.com, VacationRentals.com, Abritel, and FeWo-direktExpedia Group Take: "From beach houses