Expedia Group: The World's Travel Platform. Really?
Skift Take
Expedia Group is arguably — OK, clearly — not "The World's Travel Platform." But we understand that marketing machines strive to do their thing.
Oh, the chutzpah.
Since Expedia changed its name from Expedia Inc. to Expedia Group in March, it has been touting itself as "The World's Travel Platform." At the company's partner conference in December, executives took the stage in Las Vegas and variously described the company as already being "The World's Travel Platform" or aspiring to reach that status. They even made plenty of comparisons to Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
The boast might come as a shock to millions of people from China to India, and from France to Brazil who buy their flights, hotels and vacations on Ctrip, WeChat, MakeMyTrip, Despegar, Flight Centre, Booking.com, Google, their local travel agency, or through a membership club.
Far from being "The (our emphasis added) World's Travel Platform," Expedia Group noted in 2018 that it only had 12 percent of overall travel market share the previous year in the U.S. and Canada; 3 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; 5 percent in Asia Pacific; and 2 percent in Latin America.
To us, that hardly makes Expedia Group the platform of choice for the majority of the world's tr
