Expedia Is Growing Alternative Accommodations Faster But Booking Isn’t Slowing Down
Photo Credit: Online travel agencies make many hotels and tours and activities, such as those in Honolulu, shown here, available to book online. Unsplash / AussieActive
Skift Take
Booking sites are offering more types of travel products and services on their platforms. Of these verticals, alternative accommodations are a highly contested space where Booking and Airbnb lead for now.
While online marketing has become more accessible over the years, it remains difficult to acquire both a breadth and depth of travel inventory. Therefore, Skift Research believes one way to build a competitive moat in online travel is to be the go-to platform for anything and everything travel.
Our newest Skift Research report, The State of Online Travel Agencies 2018 Part II: Supply takes a comprehensive look into the supply platforms of Expedia Group and Booking Holdings. We specifically focus on these two companies as they generate the highest revenue among online booking sites in the world and both have publicly available filings.
As part of our research, we examine the expansion of online travel agencies into new product verticals. From a supply perspective, Expedia leads in hotel properties and airlines, but Booking Holdings dominates in alternative accommodations (excerpted below), car rentals, and restaurants. Among the two companies, Expedia has the relative lead in tour
