Travel Industry Earnings Coverage

It must be heartening to Sabre to win Louvre, Europe's second-largest hotel group, as a customer of its central reservation system. But Sabre didn't notch significant hotel enterprise wins in recent pre-Covid years. So it will need to sign other hotel groups in 2021 to sustain momentum.

Expedia Group will restart its marketing machine in phases. First, it will tout its vacation rental brands like Vrbo. By around April, it will roll out a campaign touting Expedia as a place for booking "the complete trip." It makes sense to pay for those efforts partly by cutting some of its Google investment.

While Tripadvisor has transitioned over the years away from hotel metasearch in a big way — largely because of Google's incursions — Trivago is just starting to dabble with diversification. That tilt could lead to more significant changes in the future.

Google's advertising revenue and profits skyrocketed during the fourth quarter — although travel industry spend didn't drive the results. As with other industries, travel advertisers will likely flock to YouTube for brand promotions when demand returns.

MakeMyTrip hasn't had to tap into its credit facilities recently, and that's a decent sign as it takes advantage of India's tentative Covid and travel recoveries.

Despite the Covid-19 hit, Airbnb stands above its fellow travel rivals due to its ability to continue to book sales during the crisis and turn those stays into cash flow.

Online travel brands can no longer count on paid marketing alone to drive growth as they try to penetrate developing markets. Despegar is ahead of its larger global rivals in embracing "fintech." It sees consumer loans as a way to appeal to many travel buyers who don't use banks.

Using an American football analogy, Expedia Group is working on technique and drawing up a new playbook during its bye week. The company claims to not care much about market share dynamics now because travel volumes are low, but it is trying to be ready to come back strong when the game resumes.

Trivago has big structural problems, such as two online travel agencies being responsible for three-quarters of its referral revenue, but it appears to be managing costs and pumping out product changes during this down time. Give the company credit for maintaining a pulse.