Skift Take

Tech companies have been hard hit by layoffs in 2023. Expedia Group, which has been consolidating its workforce since 2019, continues to tinker with staff levels.

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Expedia Group laid off around 100 employees in a round of cuts that impacted its product and tech organization, Skift has learned.

A company spokesperson confirmed that this was the second round of layoffs at the Seattle-headquartered company in recent months.

“We are committed to delivering great travel experiences for our customers as demand remains high,” the spokesperson said. “As we align operations to our business transformation, this may result in the elimination of some roles. We remain confident in our strategy and value the contribution of all our employees.”

Many of the impacted employees were in Expedia Group’s data and AI group, sources said.

There’s no indication that the job cuts represent any weakening of Expedia Group’s commitment to AI and machine learning. But, as is the case for other online travel companies, investments in AI features aren’t yet contributing to financial results.

Expedia Group had 16,500 employees at the end of 2022 and 100 employees represent considerably less than 1% of its global workforce.

Expedia confirmed that this was the second round of job cuts in recent months, although it didn’t provide details about the earlier round.

There have been a host of layoffs among tech companies this year; in travel these included at Google, Sonder, Vacasa, Inspirato, Avantstay, Hopper, Vtrips, and many more.

Skift reported exclusively on Monday that Booking Holdings’ Kayak and OpenTable brands laid off around 80 people.

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Tags: artificial intelligence, booking holdings, expedia, kayak, layoffs, online travel newsletter, opentable

Photo credit: An image from an Expedia Group One Key/Pretzels ad. Source: Expedia Group

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