Expedia Q3业绩超预期上调指引 CEO称需求强劲

Shares of Expedia getting caught in the downdraft today. That's after reporting third quarter earnings. The k shaped economy playing a role in those results with the CEO, Ariane Gorin, saying on the conference call, as in previous quarters, we saw strength with more affluent consumers, and we wanna start there. She joins us now here in Studio 2 to talk a little bit more about that. And I do wanna start off with some of the top line numbers here because...

And just to go through them, we're talking about 7% room night growth, 11% on the gross bookings, 12% on top line revenue, 17% on adjusted EBITDA growth. You raise your full year outlook. Your share should be up 13%, not down. What's going on? Well, look. Yeah. Who can ever explain explain what's going on? What I would say is we had a very strong third quarter. Mhmm. Demand was resilient. You see it in the numbers. As you said, we raised our full year guide.

Now it's true that, you know, as we look into the fourth quarter, there is some moderation in demand. We often see that ahead of elections. And then in addition, there's the geopolitical events happening in The Middle East, some in Europe that have put some moderation in demand. But, you know, overall, travel sector's healthy. We're executing well, and it's an exciting time for us. Well, I am curious about that, though, too.

I I mean, I I I know you guys talked a lot about how election cycles sort of disrupt the travel schedule, but give me a sense as to how quickly you tend to see a rebound coming out of these elections. I mean, are you seeing it already here on day two? Look. It's... It really... It it depends as you but the things we look for are what's the impact on consumer confidence, what's the impact on discretionary income, and to the extent that those move, you know, people wanna spend on travel.

Well... So talk to us more than about what the travel landscape looks like knowing we still see persistently high fuel costs. There are potential headwinds still, when it comes to cost pressures that consumers even at the high end may, be feeling. For how long can this go so long as we don't see a material, slowdown in the inflationary pressures? As you say, know, the strength more on the high end. And despite the fact that there are high fuel costs, we still saw a lot of people traveling and people spending.

They wanna get outdoors. As we look forward to the holiday season, what we're seeing is that people who are looking for flights domestically, their prices are up almost 15%. If they're looking internationally, it's up almost 20%. So we're seeing people looking for good deals. They're more flexible on their dates. They're using more things like our flight price tracking tools. They're they're really trying to figure out how can they make their dollars go further for them.

But right now, people are still spending. And you're saying people are looking at things like this, not AI agents because you obviously have partnership. There's... How does that change the game for you? Well, look. I... You know, these AI agents are really an opportunity for us. I would start by... The third party AI agents, whether it's a muse or others, these are opportunities for our brands to get out there. And as travelers are, you know, searching more, whether it's these new AI services, social, or search.

These are all opportunities for our brands to be put in front of customers. Then there's all the agentic work we're doing in our own products because it's true. People are getting more used to using natural language to have conversations. It's still a very small portion of the traffic that comes into us. And even in our brands, the natural language experiences we have are still a small portion of traffic, but we see that when people use our AI compare feature feature to compare different properties rather than going into each property card, they're more likely to book, and they book bigger ticket items.

Well, I am curious, though, though, does that, though, complain... Change the complexion of your business as well? Because, obviously, there was an advertising relationship that you got off of the, I guess, the traditional search model. How much does the AI search model, for lack of a better phrase, or agentic model, how much does that change the economics for you? You know, I'd start by saying that two thirds of our bookings in our consumer brands, Expedia, hotels.com, and Vrbo, come directly to us.

So there's a third that starts elsewhere in these other search experiences and social and the like. Now when it comes to AI, it's still very early days. The economics of this all is getting worked out. Right. But I would say the way I think about it is we've always been good at working with these new channels and figuring out a way where it makes financial sense for us to be able to attract customers to our brands. Well, my...

But my... I am curious, but my understanding is of that third that was going through traditional search or whatever it was. My understanding is that the relationship that you had with the consumer was much more direct in that way. Is it as direct when I... If I'm coming to you through an an agent... AI agent in some way, or is that sort of the benefit of that going to OpenAI or Claude or whoever? No. So I would say it's...

It it can be sort of the same. So if you were coming to us through Google or you were coming to us through an agent. By the way, in the integration we have with news right now, the agent can do all this work, and then you can choose. Do you wanna book on news, or do you actually wanna come and book directly with us? But, again, it's all quite fluid. When I when I looked at your results and I and I saw the growth you...

That you had on the b two b side, which is outpaced 20 plus Yep. Compared to 6% on the consumer side. Is that a reflection of some of the shift we've been seeing in AI, or was that something that was already sort of in place Yeah. No. Not at all. I mean, if you look at our b two b business, it was up 19% last quarter. Mhmm. It's had, I believe, almost 20 quarters in a row of really strong double digit growth. Our consumer business grew at 7%.

We've had two of our fastest growing quarters in the last couple quarters, and it actually accelerated in The US. Mhmm. They both have different exposures geographically. They have sort of different, I would say, complexions to those two businesses, but they both had really strong quarters. Well, I wanna dig more into geographic exposure because you mentioned how at least domestically there's a difference in between what is happening on domestic US travel versus international.

But what about for the people who are originating internationally? The difference in travel demand in, for US based customers versus globally. So we saw... Like, when we look at people who are coming into The US, we saw improvements from Canada and from Asia. It was still a bit soft of people from Europe coming into The US. And when you look at Europe specifically, there was strength in domestic travel and intraregional travel, but much less long haul.

Some of that was linked to air capacity. Some probably linked to the fuel cost as well. You talk a lot about... When we talk about the brands underneath Expedia, obviously, there's Expedia itself. How exactly are Vrbo and hotels doing right now relative to the Expedia brand? Look. Expedia, the brand, is our fastest growing brand. Yeah. And it's been our fastest growing brand from a number of quarters in a row. It's a brand that's got a great value proposition.

You bundle and save. You combine everything in the same place, hotels, vacation rentals, flights, cars, and the like. Hotels.com and Vrbo Mhmm. They are pure plays. Hotels.com has got an amazing loyalty program. It's actually very, loved by unmanaged business travelers in particular. Mhmm. Vrbo is the trusted vacation rental pure play. Vacation rental is actually a category where