Expedia Is Growing Alternative Accommodations Faster But Booking Isn't Slowing Down
Skift Take
Booking sites are offering more types of travel products and services on their platforms. Of these verticals, alternative accommodations are a highly contested space where Booking and Airbnb lead for now.
While online marketing has become more accessible over the years, it remains difficult to acquire both a breadth and depth of travel inventory. Therefore, Skift Research believes one way to build a competitive moat in online travel is to be the go-to platform for anything and everything travel.
Our newest Skift Research report, The State of Online Travel Agencies 2018 Part II: Supply takes a comprehensive look into the supply platforms of Expedia Group and Booking Holdings. We specifically focus on these two companies as they generate the highest revenue among online booking sites in the world and both have publicly available filings.
As part of our research, we examine the expansion of online travel agencies into new product verticals. From a supply perspective, Expedia leads in hotel properties and airlines, but Booking Holdings dominates in alternative accommodations (excerpted below), car rentals, and restaurants. Among the two companies, Expedia has the relative lead in tours and activities for now.
This is the second part of our summer research series on online travel agencies. 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.
Last week we launched the latest report in our Skift Research service, The State of Online Travel Agencies 2018 Part II: Supply.
Below is an excerpt of the report focusing on just one supply vertical, alternative accommodations. Get the full report here for our full analysis of other sectors such as traditional hotels, airlines, rental cars, tours and acti
