Hotwire Tries to Hack Its Way Into Gen Z and Millennial Hearts

Online Travel This Week

I must admit that when I was writing recently about Expedia Group’s efforts to redefine its potpourri of brands, I wondered if its discount hotel website Hotwire was still part of the mix or whether Expedia had quietly shut it down with not many people  even noticing.

It has been that long since we’d heard a peep from or about Hotwire.

But after struggling in recent years and undergoing several leadership changes, Hotwire is back with its largest ad campaign in three years. The advertising blitz, “Book Beyond Your Wildest Means,” targets Gen Z and Millennial travelers, some with a gaming bent, and relies heavily on Tik Tok, spots during the U.S. Olympic trials, and plenty of audio and video streaming, podcasts, and mobile.

The company claimed its Tik Tok challenge, which featured singer and songwriter Jason Derulo and the chance to win a $50,000 trip with private jet service, got 2 million views in the first few days.

Hotwire is sponsoring livestreams on Twitch, partnering with well-known streamers, and is serving up playlists on Spotify to get its young target audience — 60 percent of whom were found to have never stayed in a 5-star hotel — in the mood for their upcoming luxe travel on the cheap.

Hotwire is a hack of sorts when it comes to the traditional ways of booking hotels. For those unfamiliar with Hotwire, which in its early days competed heavily with Priceline’s Name Your Own Price, users select a city and can view a hotel’s star rating and price before booking. But they only find out the hotel name when the booking is complete. In this way, hotels can offer steep discounts without publicizing that they are doing so, and tarnishing their brands.

The opaque travel site’s campaign deck calls out the competition — and even its past self — for commoditizing travel by emphasizing cheap prices.

“The online travel industry has historically pursued a monolithic strategy of focusing on a simple ‘money saving’ message — this included Hotwire’s prior messaging around its Hot Rate deals. With this campaign, Hotwire is differentiating itself from the pack by focusing on a ‘not just cheap – better’ message that was rooted in customer insights and is aimed at a younger target demographic in both messaging and creative execution,” Hotwire’s campaign deck said.

All this from a company, Expedia Group, that was criticized years’ back for being slow to adopt social media.

While the initial announcements in 2019 from the Barry Diller-Peter Kern leadership regime at Expedia Group focused on $700-$750 million in annualized run rate reductions, under the covers in the interim there have been some interesting things going beyond financial reengineering.

In Brief

Google Tries Out New Attractions Strategy

Google is not giving up on tours and activities — far from it — but it is phasing out taking its own bookings in favor of focusing on a hybrid advertising and free listing strategy. Skift

Expedia Tweaks Its Brands

Orbitz as a business for LGBTQIA+ travelers? Travelocity fine-tuned to target U.S. Hispanic families? These are some of the elements of Expedia Group’s new strategy for its brands. Skift

Congress Cometh for Google

Under a U.S. Congressional bill that emerged from a House committee, Google and other big tech platforms would be barred from favoring its own products over those of the competition. Sounds too good to be true? There will be a ton of wrangling before the bill becomes law. Skift