Expedia CEO Ariane Gorin Talks Second Quarter Earnings

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Expedia it posted better than expected second quarter results. However, the company did warn of like a softening in travel demand and the current quarter, and therefore it adjusted its expectations for the rest of the Year's dig into the details, expedia CEO is with us Arianne Goren and arian you managed to get the nuance because shares absolutely popped on the fact that you'd managed to do what you needed to do and delivered for the quarter that we were

What is the consumer telling you right now?

Well, first, thank you for having me. We were very happy with our second quarter results. We saw an acceleration in our consumer business, which is what we were looking for, and then continued strength in our B to B segment and in advertising. But it's true as we look at the third quarter, we have seen some softness.

It's been a few quarters.

In a row that air ticket prices have been coming down, that the pre car rental days have been coming down, and we just started seeing a bit of that also in the third quarter.

So we're keeping an eye on it.

And good morning. It's ed in San Francisco, away from the United States, It's been an incredible summer in Europe, the Euros football or soccer tournament, the Olympics. Why is that sort of event driven process not more of a confidence giver for you in your outlook?

Yeah, Well, first of all, I would say events driven travel is a true trend, whether it's sports, whether it's concerts. You know, with Taylor Swifts concert tour the last year, you see that that really drives travel into destinations. So that certainly plays into our optimism.

But again, you know, when we.

Look at our forecast, we're looking at what's happening on pricing, what's happening in demand, and again in the long term, people certainly want to travel, which is what makes us sort of optimistic in the long term.

Arian, what's the technology story for you? If you're going to drive that outlook a little higher than you've already given, is there a way you can more closely match what people are searching for maybe the budget conscious consumer as well, if the consumer is in real time pulling back.

Well, you know, the great news is that because of the work that we've done on our platform in the last few years, in particular around having a customer identity across all of our brands. We have a better understanding of the traveler across all of our brands, looking at what are they searching for, what are they interested in, which allows us to make more personalized recommendations that are more relevant for each traveler.

Let's talk about the brands and brand loyalty. Before we do that, we just want to a minor audience of TV and radio. We have sat down with the Expedia CEO, Arianne Goren, and what's really interesting is you have this rollout of sort of a brand loyalty program one Key beyond the US and UK, but you're slowing it slightly and there was an impact perhaps to Hotels dot Com

Sure?

So, we actually just came up on the one year anniversary of our one Key loyalty program. We launched it last summer in the US and it's a program that ties together Expedia, Hotels dot Com, and Verbo, which are our three biggest brands. It allows travelers to earn and burn one key cash across all of the brands and also benefit from higher discounts, especially in hotels.

Sort of the more loyal they are.

We've been pleased with the results in the US and we've just launched in the UK, But as we step back and looked at other countries, what we realized is this is a program that works the best when we have all three of our big brands operating at scale, and in many countries outside of the US and.

UK, we have one leading brand.

So what we're doing now is we're looking at how do we make sure that we have the strongest loyalty value proposition in each country for the brands that are there. And the good news is, even before making any changes, all of the loyalty members outside of the US and UK are already benefiting from the higher member discounts.

You are relatively new in this seat May twenty twenty four as CEO, you were on the board a bit before that, but arian you came from the B to B offering advertising offering, which you've just articulated.

Is going really well.

How therefore, can you bring your learnings from that to the consumer? How you focused on driving better margins growth from a consumer that, as you say at the moment is nervous.

So I would start by saying, our consumer business has three very strong and well loved brands in Expedia, Hotels, dot Com and Verbo, and they all have great value propositions. My experience, and I think anybody's experience in business, is always that you want to make sure you understand what is your customer need and then how do you have

Mary Anne, what's the one single biggest headwind or risk to you and to a consumer's choice to travel for the remainder of this year.

Look, I would go back to what I talked about earlier, which is, you know, prices coming down somewhat. You could say that's sort of a headwind in the sense that you know, as you report earnings, obviously prices have an impact. But I like to see the glass half full rather than half empty. And when you consider it that way, you think we'll travels may be becoming more affordable.

It's great to have some time with you. Arianne Goran exped at a CEO here in New York.

We thank you, thank you for having me