The marketing spend of online travel giants continued to edge upwards in the second quarter, although there are signs diversification in spend is being taken seriously.
The sales and marketing investment of the likes of Airbnb, Booking Holdings, Expedia Group and Trip.com Group increased year over year in the second quarter. The vast marketing spend, a total of $4.6 billion in Q2 compared with $4.2 billion year over year, serves as a measure of the fierce competition in the market and the lengths online travel agencies continue to go to push consumers into the funnel at the top.
Airbnb spent $573 million on sales and marketing, representing about 21% of revenue and up from $486 million in the second quarter of 2023. During its quarterly earnings call, chief financial officer Ellie Mertz spoke about incremental increases in performance marketing and said the company is maintaining “extremely high efficiencies.”
The accommodation platform has also said it expects increases in marketing expenditure to outpace increases in revenue in Q3 as it looks to expand to new countries, including Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.
Booking Holdings, meanwhile, reported total marketing spend in Q2 of $1.9 billion, up slightly year over year from $1.8 billion and representing 32% of revenue. President and CEO Glenn Fogel highlighted its social media marketing strategy as one area where the company is increasing spend.
Fogel also touched on increases in the number of active travelers and said repeat travelers are growing at an even faster rate for Booking.
“In terms of direct booking behavior, we are pleased to see that the direct booking channel continues to grow faster than room nights acquired through paid marketing channels,” he said.
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At Expedia Group, marketing spend increased 14% to $1.8 billion in the second quarter, representing just north of 50% of the company’s revenue, up from 47% in Q2 2023. Chief financial officer Julie Whalen explained that it had reduced marketing costs last year as it finalized work on its tech stack and launched the One Key loyalty program. The company said the move had hit Vrbo, which meant a “planned ramp in marketing spend” on the brand and international markets this year.
In an earnings call, CEO Ariane Gorin said the company was “getting surgical in identifying drivers of repeat behavior in addition to loyalty and app usage, whether it’s burning One Key Cash or adopting [artificial intelligence]-enabled products like price predictions.”
She added that the company was looking at further opportunities to “rationalize marketing spend.”
Trip.com Group also upped its sales and marketing spend in Q2 with the China-based OTA investing $390 million, a 20% jump year over year. The figure represented about 22% of revenue, and the company put the lift down to increased marketing promotion activities to “drive business growth,” particularly for its international OTA.
Mirroring the strategy of other OTAs, the company said it continues to “focus on our mobile-first strategy.” It added that 65% of transactions on the international OTA platform come from the mobile platform, increasing to 75% in Asia.
During an earnings call, chief financial officer Cindy Wang said the volume of transactions from the mobile channel will “help us to have a strong leverage, especially on the sales [and] marketing expenses in the longer-term period.”
