The Biggest Inventory Challenges for Online Booking Sites: Latest from Skift Research

Skift has broken its online travel agency coverage this year into a multi-part series exploring different aspects of the business model in depth. The second part of our series, The State of OTAs 2018 Part II: Supply, looks at the inventory and supplier aspect of online travel agencies in North America and Europe. The first part of the series examined the advertising spend of these same sites, while a forthcoming piece will look at emerging market booking platforms.

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While online marketing is becoming democratized, supply is as difficult as ever to wrangle up. Therefore, Skift believes one way to stand out and build a competitive moat is to be the go-to platform for anything and everything travel. In this report, we break down Booking Holdings and Expedia’s supply ecosystem, from hotels and airlines to alternative accommodations, tours, and even restaurants.

This supply has taken years to build and creates network effects that are a crucial competitive moat for the online travel agencies. Through country- and region-level analysis of accommodations, we find that there remains room for both Expedia and Booking to grow supply geographically.

We also examine the shift into new product verticals. Expedia leads in hotel properties and airlines, but Booking dominates in alternative accommodations, car rentals, and restaurants. Expedia also has the relative lead in tours and activities for now.

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What you’ll learn from this report:

• A comprehensive survey of the suite of travel products offered by Booking and Expedia with respective market analyses
• Property and room night comparisons between Expedia and Booking platforms
• The evolution of both traditional and alternative accommodation inventory
• Volume and economic trends in online air ticketing
• Proprietary insights into the geographic positioning of Expedia versus Booking
• Analysis of M&A trends with forward looking implications
• Prospects for emerging online travel offerings such as tours and activities and restaurants

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