The Most Important Story in Online Travel in 2019
Skift Take
Airbnb overtook Expedia in room nights booked in the first quarter of 2019, but questions loom for 2020. Will Airbnb lose its focus as it vows to go public and become a broader online travel agency? Will Expedia, which seems lost in terms of creating a revised strategy, find its way? So many headlines to come.
The story of the year wasn’t about a jaw-dropping event such as CEOs getting forced out, like what happened to Gillian Tans of Booking.com and Mark Okerstrom of Expedia Group.
Nor was the story about a game-changing acquisition, of which there were few of epic proportions in the last 12 months in online travel.
Instead, the story with the biggest implications in 2019 for online travel was Airbnb exceeding Expedia in booked nights, a milestone that took place without notice, recorded perhaps on some servers or spreadsheets somewhere.
During the first three months of 2019, Airbnb sold 91 million room nights, edging out Expedia’s 80.8 million.
Booking Holdings was still far in the lead during that quarter w
