Daily Podcast: Expedia Says Believe Us We’re Making Progress

Today’s edition of Skift’s daily podcast discusses Expedia’s latest earnings report, an innovative model for tour operators funding local economies, and how one travel brand is helping Europe rethink the workplace.

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Episode Notes

Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Online travel giant Expedia Group said Thursday its two-year rebuild of the company is making progress, but that it has no hard data yet to show that.

In releasing its fourth quarter earnings, Expedia said it saw plenty of cause for optimism, but that it’s a wait-and-see game until the travel industry reverts to a semblance of normal to quantify the progress.

While rival Airbnb, which reports fourth quarter earnings next week, basks in its brand awareness and proclivity in attracting bookers directly, Expedia Group’s selling and marketing expense line in the fourth quarter was 45.8 percent of revenue. Selling and marketing expenses climbed 106 percent to more than $1 billion.

For the past two years, Expedia Group has been reorganizing the internal workings of the company, combining brand teams that previously may have worked at cross-purposes, shedding brands that weren’t core to the company, and trying to consolidate its tech stack. The company entered 2022 with 10,000 fewer employees than at the end of 2019.

Next, the huge drop in visitors to Africa since the start of the pandemic has had disastrous consequences for destinations on the continent that relied on tourism revenue to fund wildlife protection measures. One tour operator is diverting some of its commission money to local communities, which it believes could serve as a model for other companies, writes Editorial Assistant Rashaad Jorden.

London-based Niarra Travel is taking 10 percent in commissions, substantially less than other tour operators, and is using the money that would have gone toward additional commission fees to help hotels and lodges pay for local sustainability initiatives. Founder Byron Thomas believes its practices could spur other tour operators to adopt similar tactics, especially as more destinations and companies are reassessing their commission structures.

However, it’s uncertain if the practice of tour operators only taking 10 percent commission will become widespread. One industry executive told Skift companies that occupy several levels on the tourism supply chain have expenses that make taking such a commission very difficult.

We end today with Europe’s attempts to assist remote workers. The European Parliament has enlisted senior executives from Selina, WeWork, and Zoom to help it create policies addressing the challenges remote workers face, reports Corporate Travel Editor Matthew Parsons in this week’s Future of Work briefing.

The parliament is holding three roundtable discussions — the first of which takes place on February 23 — to determine how it can, among other things, build better remote worker communities and help members of the growing segment avoid isolation. Rafael Museri, the CEO and co-founder of Selina, will participate in the first roundtable while executives from WeWork and Zoom will speak about how remote workers can manage the work-life balance at the second one, to be held on April 1.

Isolation is considered to be one of the biggest challenges remote workers face. According to the WorkAnywhere campaign launched by former CNN journalist Ben Marks, 65 percent of remote workers will experience feelings of isolation or loneliness.