With around 10 online travel agency brands in the group, Expedia Group is busy redefining and differentiating them to focus on key customers and avoid too much unproductive overlap.
That’s one of the reasons Expedia Group Orbitz recently started focusing on the LGBTQIA + Market. It is part of Expedia’s larger effort to reshape its patchwork of online travel agency brands, all of which were created through acquisitions over several decades.
Whether online travel agencies or hotel brands, the differentiation of content and target groups is a challenge for companies across the spectrum, be it in the travel industry or in other industries.
“We have relaunched our Orbitz brand with a focus on LGBTQIA +,” Peter Kern, CEO of Expedia Group, told investors last month. “And that’s another kind of boost when we try to differentiate brands and really focus each brand on who their market is.”
Orbitz, which has a history of LGBTQ advocacy and claims to be the first online travel agent to mention “gay travel” on its pages in 2002, received a revamped Pride microsite in April, just in time for Pride Month in June. Travelers can search for hotels that have signed up on Orbitz Inclusion promise.
Henry Harteveldt from Research group atmosphere described the Orbitz relaunch as a “first time” in terms of a universal online travel agency that focuses on LGBTQ customers as the main target group.
“That’s a bolt of lightning,” said Harteveldt. “We have never seen anyone take a mainstream brand and target their marketing to the LGBTQ community.”
But the extent of this focus and its duration will still be a work in progress. The standard hotel search on Orbitz is not LGBTQ specific; Travelers navigate to the Pride microsite to search for LGBTQ-friendly hotels.
“Orbitz needs to market this aggressively enough that the message breaks the mess,” said travel industry analyst and advisor Henry Harteveldt of Research group atmosphere.
The Orbitz relaunch actually came with a humble advertising campaign.
“In the run-up to ‘Travel As You Are’, we did a lot of qualitative and quantitative research last year” and the insight on which this campaign was based was simple: For so many LGBTQIA travelers, it is still a feeling of security and Acceptance. Exception, not the norm, ”said an Expedia Group spokesman. “As an online travel company, we provide information and resources that help travelers experience the world on their terms. And as a brand, it means to be their advocate and to stand up for the causes that are important to them. “
Given that the “LGBTQ community is often invisible in travel marketing,” Harteveldt likes the inclusiveness, timing and lack of specificity in the Orbitz ad campaign theme “Travel as you are”. With people thinking about it and traveling again, Orbitz was smart about launching the ad campaign if it did, he said.
However, when it comes to TV advertising in June, the Expedia Group’s priorities were according to Expedia.com, Hotels.com and Vrbobo iSpot.tv. In addition to these three brands, Booking Holdings’ Priceline and Airbnb were among the top five online travel sites for ad spend – Orbitz was not among them. Orbitz did not publish potential expenses through other channels or the total cost of the campaign.
Expedias Trip Maximizer
Meanwhile, the group’s flagship brand, Expedia.com, recently ran its largest marketing campaign in years to brand itself as partially “travel maximizers”. In the Expedia language, this means, according to the company, “the traveler who wants to get involved through opportunities but now more than ever needs support during their trip”.
Sister online travel agency Travelocity has shifted its focus to US families with young children, including targeting Hispanic families with Spanish-language TV ads.
Rachel Shin, a spokeswoman for Travelocity, said the company isn’t viewing brand optimizations as a full-fledged rebranding. “We’re not envisioning alienating any of our existing customers, we’re instead working to streamline and realign our communications strategies to better appeal to family and Hispanic family travelers,” said Shin. “Our overall goal is to become the most trustworthy and most family-friendly travel website.”
This means that Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity, once bitter rivals but now owned by the Expedia Group, have all received varying degrees of brand optimizations. This happens about six years after they were united.
Additionally, Expedia is currently optimizing the Cheaptickets brand to highlight students and younger travelers as younger people tend to like “cheap”.
Expedia positions Hotels.com as frequent travelers with a rewards program that grants one free night for every 10 stays, and Vrbo’s sweet spot is for complex family trips, primarily for whole house vacation rentals.
Differentiation between hotels and online travel agencies
In a way, it’s easier to differentiate hotel brands than online travel agencies, argued Harteveldt of Atmosphere.
Hotel properties have geographic restrictions in their contracts, he said, so Marriott International’s Renaissance and Sheraton hotels, in theory, would not compete for the same clients in a given location, Harteveldt said.
However, Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Cheaptickets and Hotels.com have no contractual barriers that prohibit them from stealing each other’s customers.
Given the overwhelming overlap in their products, Expedia Group hopes that marketing and a new focus will make all the difference.
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Photo credit: A non-binary person in a taxi as part of Orbitz’s new LBTQIA + “Travel As You Are” campaign.
