Please welcome to the stage, Ariane Gorin.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Explore 2025. I want to start by saying there are a lot of people standing in the back. There are still some seats up here, so feel free to make your way up here. Thank you all for being with us today and our beautiful Seattle campus. It's wonderful to see so many familiar faces as we kick off what I know is going to be an amazing day. Last year at Explore, which also happened to be my first week as CEO, we introduced some big ideas. We talked about piloting our AI assistant, Romie, our growing ambitions in advertising, and the launch of our travel media network, and how we're turning social inspiration into bookings with travel shops. Today, you'll hear how those ideas have evolved in exciting ways and the new opportunities we have to shape the future of travel.
We're excited to welcome Jeff Freeman, who's the President and CEO of US Travel Association, and he's going to talk to us about the state of the industry and the macroeconomic environment. I'm thrilled to welcome Arthur Brooks, who's a bestselling author and a professor of happiness, who's going to close our afternoon with reflections on happiness, leadership, and the power of meaningful experiences. Because what we do isn't just about logistics and bookings and technology. It's about helping people explore the world, to connect with others, and to create memories. Over the last decade, together, we've created over a billion trips. As I reflect on what's made that possible, it really comes down to three things: partnership, innovation, and optimism. Let's start with what's always been at the heart of what we do: our shared passion for partnership.
Last year, travel and tourism contributed over $11 trillion to the global economy. By 2035, that number is going to grow to $16.5 trillion. That is a massive opportunity for our industry. To capitalize on it fully, we've got to work together. As the proverb said, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." Partnership is and always has been central to what we do. Whether we're working with a destination organization, a hotel, a car rental company, or really any of the companies that you in this room represent, our shared success comes from serving travelers and delivering better experiences. That's how we together drive growth across the entire travel ecosystem. During my 12 years at Expedia Group, I've had the privilege of being part of hundreds, if not thousands, of partner meetings and partner conversations.
I love building plans together, identifying opportunities, and turning those into reality. A great example is our recent partnership with Southwest Airlines. We were the first OTA to list Southwest flights, and we're seamlessly connecting their flights with hotels, car rentals, and activities, which is creating a flywheel effect that benefits so many of you in this room. There are hundreds more stories like that in this room, and I hope that this week in Seattle will spark more ideas like that. To thank you all for your trust and partnership, I'm thrilled to share that we're going to upgrade all Explore attendees to Platinum status, which is the highest tier of our One Key Loyalty Program. I know that some of you probably won't book your own inventory through us, though we'd be very happy if you did.
We hope that you can take full advantage of the perks when you're booking everything else. Now let's talk a little bit about innovation. We all see the change in our industry. It is extraordinary. To stay ahead, we all have to be agile and intentional. This is especially important with the birth of AI. Look, there's a lot of talk and hype around AI, and there's no shortage of predictions of what AI is going to do. As Peter Drucker once said, "The best way to predict the future is to create it." Here at Expedia Group, we're creating that future. We're moving fast and with intention. AI is unlocking new possibilities for how people discover, book, and experience travel. Travelers are finding their next adventures through social media, content creators, and increasingly through AI-powered search.
That shift is opening new doors of engagement for all of us. Look, we're fortunate to be based here in Seattle, surrounded by companies like Microsoft and Amazon. We're working with them and deepening our partnerships with companies like OpenAI and Meta and Google, to name just a few, to seamlessly deliver travel experiences and meet travelers where they are and where they're going next. We're making huge progress. Later today, you're going to hear from our Chief Product Officer, Shilpa, and she's going to talk about how we're injecting AI across our product experiences. She'll also share our vision and how we're turning into reality the idea of bringing trip planning and servicing together seamlessly in one AI-agentic experience. We're the first to do that.
Jochen, our Chief Marketing Officer, is going to share how our work with Meta is bringing shoppable conversational experiences directly into social feeds. Alfonso, the President of our private label B2B business, is going to share some exciting new B2B products and services. If you go to our product solution space, you'll learn how machine learning is giving travelers more choice and our advertisers greater reach. We're proud of what we've achieved, and we're going to continue learning and adapting. Now, while this is a period of profound change, it's also a time of extraordinary opportunity. That sense of opportunity brings me to something that I think is just as important as partnership and innovation, and that's optimism. Back in 2019, I had the privilege of being on the Warm Up Act on stage at Explore before General Colin Powell.
It was a bit of a tough slot, I know. Colin Powell shared a phrase that's really stuck with me ever since then. He said, "Optimism is a force multiplier." Little did I know then that just a few months later, we'd all be facing the COVID pandemic, and we'd need deep wells of optimism to persevere and thrive. That's also true now. In a time of inflation, change, and uncertainty, optimism isn't just a mindset. It's a powerful driver for all of us. It's how we reset, reimagine, and move forward with new opportunities. Yes, we're navigating economic and geopolitical uncertainty, but we've all seen this before, and we know just how resilient our industry is. Travel is a fundamental human need. If you had any doubt about that, here's the proof.
According to our latest research, more than half of consumers say that travel is more important to them now than it was five years ago. People are choosing experiences over things, and events are driving demand and the economy in a powerful way. Taylor Swift's tour drove over $9 billion of economic activity. The 2026 World Cup here in the U.S. is expected to drive billions more in activity. Travel builds bridges across languages, cultures, and borders. It helps us celebrate life's most cherished moments. Ultimately, we stay optimistic because we're in the business of happiness. Those billions of trips I was talking about that we created together, those are weddings, anniversaries, business deals, family reunions. Travel is central to our most cherished moments. Let's do a quick thought experiment. Everyone close your eyes. Think about your favorite memory of the last year. Where were you?
Who were you with? Now open your eyes. I bet most of you were thinking about some time that you were traveling. Now, to confirm my hunch, I asked ChatGPT, "What kinds of photos do people include in their annual holiday cards?" Number one was family portraits. Number two was pictures of kids and pets. Number three was travel photos. Together as an industry, we are not just shaping the future of travel. We are shaping how people experience the world. We are doing it through partnership, innovation, and optimism. Thank you for being on this journey with us. I hope you have a productive and fun day. Now it is my pleasure to introduce someone many of you know well, our partner and friend, Expedia Group's Chief Commercial Officer, Greg Schultz.
Hey, Shahbaz.
Hello.
What a year, Ariane. Hi, everyone. It is so good to see you all here. Welcome to Explore. This is my favorite event of the year, and I'm sure it's yours too, right? My favorite event because it's a chance for us to celebrate partnership and look back at what's worked well and look ahead. Today, you're going to see how the Expedia Group Marketplace is built to help you grow. Our marketplace brings together unmatched global supply, powerful technology, and massive demand. It's the most connected marketplace in travel. We have hotels and vacation rentals, airlines and car rentals, activities, cruise lines. We work with destinations and tech companies, financial institutions, even other OTAs. We touch literally every corner of the travel industry. As I look out into the crowd, I see some of you are fierce competitors. Some of you consider Expedia a competitor.
I know this: the more that each of us puts into this marketplace, the more all of us grow. Ariane said that optimism is a force multiplier, and it's true. That's beautiful. You know what's more beautiful? Growing your business. The Expedia Group Marketplace is a force multiplier for your business. It's a connected ecosystem in which technology drives demand, and supply partners capture a greater share of a growing market. I'm going to talk about this marketplace, and I'm going to start with supply. We have a lot of supply partners, and a lot of you are here. We have more than 3 million, and it continues to grow. Last year, we added 900,000 accommodations. We added new car rental companies, cruise lines. We even added airlines, as Ariane mentioned, Southwest and Ryanair and others. Why is our supply still growing?
Why, after more than 25 years, do we continue to add content? The number one reason to work with us is scale. Suppliers come to our marketplace because they know that they'll find demand they otherwise won't see. That is why Southwest and Ryanair both joined Expedia. In fact, Ryanair joined one of our fastest-growing segments. The European air tickets are currently growing 50%. No airline or any partner, really, for that matter, wants to join Expedia if all we do is sell the cheapest rate. We work hard, and our technology works really hard to ensure that our travelers are making informed choices and that we're selling your best product at the best possible price. For airlines, that means that we're offering more rates with flexibility. We're offering extras like premium seats and bags.
In fact, less than 25% of our air customers end up buying the cheapest offer. That's a win for our travelers and a win for you. For hotels, our marketplace is an effective way for you to highlight that which makes your property unique. I'll give you a personal example. I love traveling with my dog. There she is, Kaya. Hey, Kaya. She's a very discerning traveler, and she only books on Expedia. Expedia makes it easy for us crazy dog people. We have pet-friendly filters. Even cooler is when I'm looking at pet-friendly hotels, Expedia knows me and is showing me pictures with dogs. That's great for me and Kaya because we find the hotel that we want. It's great for you because I'm willing to pay a premium for what your hotel has to offer. We do this at scale.
In these cases and for all of our partners, our marketplace is a force multiplier for your commercial strategy, capturing demand you otherwise will not see and helping you convert at the best possible price. That is supply. Let us look at tech because at the core of this marketplace is advanced technology and investments in connectivity and partner tools, search and distribution, and artificial intelligence. You are supposed to play along here. AI. AI. Everyone is talking about AI, but AI is not just talk. It is here today, and we all need to leverage AI. At Expedia, we are using it to make our pricing smarter, our visibility stronger, and our operations smoother for both our travelers and for you, our partners. All of this to benefit the marketplace. Our technology is a force multiplier for your business. Here is one of my favorite examples.
Our supply teams use an AI-powered system that we call Scout. Last year, our partners took from Scout's recommendations more than a million actions that resulted in a 10% increase in transactions and an incremental $6 billion in revenue to our partners. Expedia Group's technology also allows you to target specific segments, ensuring that you're making the right offer to the right customer at the right time. Hotels love our B2B technology that we call optimized distribution. It's a system that helps expand reach while keeping prices consistent across channels. Today, we have more than 70 chains enrolled in optimized distribution, many more independent hotels, and bookings through this have grown more than 20% in the past year. We are going to talk a lot about these and other technology. Later this morning, you're going to hear directly from our new Chief Product Officer, Shilpa.
Supply technology, but none of this is possible without massive amounts of demand. The Expedia Group Marketplace connects our supply partners with travelers all over the world, helping unlock growth even as macro conditions change. I just recently moved to Europe. Before that, I lived in the U.S. for five years. Before that, I lived in Asia for five years. Every region has its challenges and its opportunities. Expedia Group is there to help. Let's look at Asia. By 2030, there are going to be 3.5 billion people in the Asian middle class. 70% of the world's middle class will be in Asia. It is an incredible market, incredible opportunity. Our brands and our extensive B2B network give you access to these customers. Last year, our B2B business in Asia grew more than 30%.
Look at Expedia, Japan, which has consistently been the largest source of Japanese travelers going to Hawaii. That has led to a multi-year strategic partnership with Hawaii Tourism Japan. They advertise with us because our advertising is an effective way to reach travelers and generate demand targeting the segments that you want. Our travel media network is there throughout the travel journey from dreaming, planning, booking, travel, and beyond. AI is turbocharging our advertising products. From deep insights and automated bidding, AI-generated ad copy, machine learning-powered image selection, like what I talked about for my dog. We help you scale smarter and perform better. This marketplace also brings diverse demand. Our B2B network is unmatched. Last year, I talked about the scale of this network. This year, we have 10% more demand partners in this network ready to sell your products.
Alfonso and Karen are going to be on stage to share all the latest in B2B. Of course, we have our own iconic brands, Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo. Expedia remains the leader in multiple products with travelers who are staying longer and spending more. Hotels.com is the go-to booking app for hotels. You are going to really love the branding that we introduced today. Our vacation rentals business continues to grow through Vrbo with groups and families planning longer, more memorable trips. You are going to hear directly from our brand GMs next, actually, on stage. I will end with a big thank you. Thank you for your partnership. Thank you for being here today. Take it all in because I think you will see how supply, demand, and Expedia Group technology come together to be an awesome multiplier for you. Thank you.
Please welcome to the stage, Hari Nayar.
Yeah, baby.
Good morning, everybody. It is an absolute delight to be here with you this morning. My name is Hari, and I'm responsible for Hotels.com. Now, I'm a long-time Expedian, and it is extraordinary to see so many familiar faces, friends. Some of them almost are family members to me. So it is welcome to our home. Now, I'm going to call out on every Expedian in the house. I want you to give the warmest, loudest welcome that you ever have in your lifetime to our guests here today. Let's do it. This is fun. This is fun. They never listen to me. You should show up more often, is what I would say. Now, this segment is all about our travelers.
Now, alongside me and my peers, Larry, who leads Vrbo, and Tracy, who leads Expedia, we are here to answer and give you a perspective of the three questions that we tend to get asked the most. Here they are. One is, who is the traveler? Who are our travelers? We will attempt to give you our perspective on not just the similarities, but more importantly, the differences between our travelers, the distinctiveness that gives you a sense of the breadth of travelers we are able to deliver to your doorstep. Second, Hari, of all the things that your travelers care about, what do they really care about? Do not give us a list of 17 things. Tell me the two or three things that they really care about, and we will share that with you.
Finally, give you a sense of the products that we are building or in the process of building to meet those needs. Hopefully, this perspective will allow you to figure out your products and offerings and services and see how deeply they align with what we have to offer. Let's get into Hotels.com and who's the traveler. One, they are frequent travelers. The Hotels.com customer, on average, tends to travel about eight times a year. That is the highest average that we have in the Expedia portfolio. Now, we as partners, we love the term frequency because it gives us an opportunity to establish some familiarity with the traveler, to be proactive to our needs. Between you and us and I, we have the ability to do just that. Second, they are internationally diverse.
The Hotels.com business is a near-even split between the U.S. and the rest of the world. What that tells us is, for those of you who have portfolios and hotels in the U.S., we have a great opportunity to deliver the international customer to you, but the reverse is also true. We can deliver the U.S.-based travelers to you no matter where your portfolio is in the world. This was a bit of a head-scratcher for me when I first took on the job back in August. Over a quarter of our business is business bookers, business bookings. It turns out that there are lots of small and medium-sized businesses who use Hotels.com as their default website to make travel for their business trips because they do not have access to a TMC or a corporate travel agent. They use Hotels.com.
We love the predictability of the patterns of business travel, isn't it? It's usually midday. The ADRs are higher. What's not to love? Fourth is they are spontaneous. Almost 30% of our bookings happen in the zero to three-day window. This doesn't mean they procrastinate. They're not leaving things to the end. They are frequent travelers. And what that makes them is they are really savvy. They know exactly what they want. Now, given their booking patterns so last-minute, it gives us an opportunity to cement some of the gaps and the cracks you may have when it comes to occupancy, specifically when it comes to last-minute. Finally, they are social-first. They are digitally very savvy. They're usually the first and early ones to discover a property or a destination. They're not afraid to share it with the world.
If you really want to amplify your products and your services, this is the audience to do it through. Now that we get a sense of the traveler, let's get a sense of those things that they really care about. This is what they tell us. This is what they tell me. Hari, give me a site that rewards me. Give me a site that makes me feel like I have got a treat for myself. This is a very, very strong emotional need that they express. Second, make things hassle-free. For goodness' sake, life is hard. Travel is hard. Make it effortless. Give me those insider tips. Give me those travel hacks. Make it easy. You can. We are attempters. We will. Finally, it is worry-free. This one's an interesting one because these are travelers who love to travel, but they hate to plan.
They hate to plan. They rely on us to make it easy for them. We have some examples about how we're trying to do it for them. One of the things I'm going to do is, for each of these categories, show some of the products that we have in place or we are building. It starts with rewards to me. For Hotels.com, depending upon where you are in the world, we have two different flavors of our loyalty program. On the left-hand side, outside the U.S. and U.K., we have a signature loyalty program, which is the stay 10 nights, get one night free. Super popular, very simple. Everybody understands it.
Now, what is important for this audience to know is when you have a customer who's booked 10 nights, the 11th night, when they're redeeming it, we, Hotels.com, is the one that pays for the 11th night. You, as a partner, you get paid as you would expect to get paid for the 11th night. On the right-hand side is our One Key program that we introduced almost two years ago here in the U.S. and in the U.K. It is an example where you have a hotel who's giving us a member price for a gold customer. You almost have 50,000 hotels on our platform that offer gold and platinum prices. On top of that, we as Hotels.com have added additional loyalty currency, which is called One Key Cash, because we have equal skin in the game to send you those travelers and make it valuable enough for them.
The second example is VIP Access. This is the best of the best. These are partners, and these are hotel partners who've given us consistent access to competitive rates and availability and consistent high traveler review scores. Now that you've qualified to be a part of the VIP Access program, we have our bits to do to make sure that we are giving you everything that we can to give you more visibility. What you see on the left-hand side is we also double the One Key cash. We fund it so that we make it really appealing for these travelers to pick their hotels. Hotels in the VIP Access program get eight times more page views than the ones who do not. Eight times. Ariane talked about it. Greg talked about it. Shilpa will talk about this. We're very, very happy to introduce AI Filters on Hotels.com.
About 8% of our customers actually engage with this product. This is all about making travel discoverable, making your properties easily discoverable. Here is an example where somebody wants to go to Paris. We have auto-populated search filters out there to make it easy for the traveler. If they want to search on their own, they can actually type stuff. The three most popular things that they type are show me hotels that have got free breakfast, parking, and all-inclusive hotels. Now, our travelers who engage with this product tend to also convert higher. This is actually one of my favorites. It is hotel comparison. When choices are so overwhelming, we make it so hard on travelers, it usually comes down to price. It does not need to come down to price is the point.
Here is an example where we now have the ability to compare five hotels side by side. You can see the traveler review scores. You can see the star rating. You can see the price. More than that, we are able to show all the products and services of your property. Here is the hard truth. I can't sell what I don't have. Cannot do it. Second, I can't share what I don't know. I cannot do these two things. We rely on you to give us all the information so that we can do an amazing job to make sure that your property is showcased in the best way possible. Finally, one of my favorites is worry-free. When people are trying to search for hotels and other providers that are out there, it usually comes down to price.
Usually, the emotion that takes over them is, am I getting gypped? Am I paying too much? Is it too expensive? Am I getting a great deal? Am I getting a value? We introduce something called price insights. Here is an example where a traveler has searched for a Hotel Mulberry that you see on top. It seems that the price is within range. Nothing not to love. However, for this traveler, $620 for those dates seems a little expensive. It may be within range, too much for me, but I am interested in the hotel, which takes you to the second product, which is called price alert. Now you have a traveler who has the ability to click on the bell. Now they have opted into price alerts. Now when the price drops below a certain threshold, we alert them.
In terms of this alert, the open rate for this alert is 13 times more than an average app notification. It just gives you a sense of travelers really, really love to engage with this product. Now, you can book, you can share, or you can also turn off the notifications if you made your booking elsewhere. Confidence drives conversion. All we do here every single day at Expedia Group is to drive confidence in our travelers so that we can deliver more to you. Now, my team and I are equally proud to have relaunched Hotels.com brand just a couple of weeks ago. The site has a new look. It's got a new feel. It's bolder. We are more intentional. We are more purposeful. We also have an amazing spokesperson. He's Bellboy.
Turns out a hotel bell, many hotels do not have a bell these days, but a hotel bell is the second most recognizable attribute in a hotel after room service. A hotel bell. So that's our man. It's his first month on the job. He's still in probation. He's trying to be very impressive. I asked him whether he can be here today. He says no because he's trying to take care of customers who are stranded at an airport, who are looking for an airport hotel. He's trying to help a family who wants to go on their perfect stay to Mauritius. I can see a little girl who's trying to chase him. He's running away from her because she's trying to ding his dinger. It has been an absolute pleasure to be here. I look forward to spending more time with you through the day.
Here is Bellboy. In my line of work, people are always asking for favors. Just the other day, someone offered to buff my brass for a deal on a room. I said, "Thanks. I'm good." I told them about Hotels.com. Members save up to 20%. With that kind of discount, you could stay at a place with a killer spa. Get a manicure. Clean up those mitts a little, Hotels.com. Members save up to 20% at hundreds of thousands of hotels. How can I help?
Please welcome to the stage, Larry Plosky.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I have a confession to make. I do not have a mascot. Our vacation rental partners are not even here with us today, as we will be getting together with them in September at Explore Connect VR in Austin.
Despite these two strikes against me, I'm happy to be at my first Explore. I joined Expedia last fall with a background in two-sided marketplaces. I led Ticketmaster's marketplace. Prior to that, the marketplace at FTD, a flower and gifting company. I was accountable for growing both supply and demand and ensuring they met on a platform that facilitated transactions and excellent customer experience. I'm aiming to do the same at Vrbo. Who is our Vrbo traveler? We appeal to families and groups who are booking two- to three-bedroom private vacation rentals with an emphasis on private. That is, the host isn't staying with them at the property. Our traveler is looking for a big trip, their splurge vacation with family and friends, and we satisfy that need. They do take plenty of other trips where vacation rental accommodations aren't right for them.
They're booking at least three to four hotel stays throughout the year. That is an opportunity for all of you. Our One Key program has been successful in taking travelers who earn One Key cash on Vrbo and having them redeem on Expedia or on Hotels.com. In fact, we had a recent email campaign, and 23% of all Vrbo customers who redeemed their cash did so on Expedia or Hotels.com. Our vacation rental guests have a long path to purchase, given the expense of their trip, the number of people in their party whose needs they had to satisfy, and the diversity and variety of properties that we have available. They start to plan very far ahead and come to our site or app frequently. I mention this because it presents an opportunity for Expedia Group advertisers who are here today. These are highly engaged travelers.
They're a prime target for your messaging and your offers and your inspiration, given their capacity to spend and the frequency of their travel. They also book over 90 days on average before their stay, which is a longer window than you see for hotels. This might be a consideration for those of you who are looking to provide other services to travelers, like rental cars or activities. In fact, about 50% of our booking value comes from customers who live over 500 mi from their destination, suggesting that they're flying to their vacations. We want to help you capture that business. In fact, we'll begin piloting other services for our travelers to make their vacation planning easier. I hope this was some useful background on Vrbo.
Now, instead of wrapping up my section with an adorable mascot, I'll allow the host from hell to do it. You might know Nick Saban and the Vrbo ad that has taken the college football world by storm. Thank you.
Check-in time is 3:00. It's 2:55. I know. Is this what he's doing now? As your host, I have some rules. First, no showers longer than five minutes. This isn't a spa. No games. No fun. Yeah, Scott. Meanwhile, at a Vrbo, you always have your vacation home to yourself. Make it a Vrbo.
Please welcome to the stage, Tracy Weber. Good morning.
Welcome. I joined Expedia Group about six months ago. I actually started in travel back in the year 2000 at a travel startup. And then also, I spent a decade at Travelocity.
After some time in retail, healthcare, and technology, I realized travel really is the best industry. It has purpose. It has joy. I couldn't be happier to be here today. At Expedia, we call our primary traveler segment the quality seekers. These are travelers who spend more for unique experiences. They want to get the most out of their time and money. They care about value. They know when to save. They know when to splurge. They're inspired by a wide range of trusted resources. They're planning deliberately. They are frequent travelers, always looking for what's that next trip. Expedia travelers also span a wide range of demographics. One of our fastest-growing segments is families and groups. They are travel planners as well. They're organizing more pieces of the trip. They have higher expectations for flexibility, value, and ease.
They lean into the power of bundling, not just to save money, but for a seamless experience. Bundling flights, hotels, cars, activities gives them that one-stop-shop benefit and helps them reduce the complexity of managing a trip. Expedia travelers also value tools that help simplify planning, booking, and managing their trip. That is exactly what we are focused on: helping travelers plan seamlessly and travel effortlessly, and in turn, driving more meaningful value for all of you in the world's most complete travel marketplace. Let us talk about what Expedia is doing to support travelers. Our quality seeker comes to us full of inspiration, from social media to word of mouth or to passion points like food and music. We are helping them take that spark, turn it into a real trip. We have built travel guides for over 450 destinations.
These are rich and visual, with helpful tips on where to go and when to go. We have also built great content around events like the New Orleans Jazz Festival and around sports teams like the Premier League champion Liverpool Football Club. We have curated travel shops that surface curated recommendations from real travelers and influencers. We are making it easier than ever to go from scrolling to planning that trip. You will hear more about that vision from Jochen in a bit. We also collaborate with destination partners to spotlight destinations that people might not have thought of, might not have considered. We make it easy to turn that inspiration into action. Let's watch a collaboration we did with a family that is on a road trip, creating some great travel memories. Now, once travelers are in that booking mindset, reassurance is key.
They want to know they're getting value and that they can feel confident about that booking and about the time of booking instead of waiting. That is why we've added tools to compare historical and current prices to enable travelers to track fares. We also even offer price drop protection so that if a flight fare drops between booking and travel, they get One Key cash back. It gives travelers peace of mind, and it helps them get over that booking hurdle. Of course, now that you're all Platinum members, thanks to Ariane earlier, you can get price drop protection free if you book your flights on Expedia in our app. If the prices do drop and our traveler gets that One Key cash back, an important point for all of you: it is not funded by you.
It's given back in One Key Cash, turned into future bookings for our travelers. Speaking of One Key, I want to highlight how powerful this currency is, not just for our traveler, but also for you. For example, we recently offered an additional One Key Cash bonus for our bookers who booked flights to use it within 30 days on another purchase for that same trip. For example, if I booked a flight to Phoenix, I could take that $20 in One Key Cash and use it on a rental car. These types of cross-line of business promotions drive incremental demand. We are planning to do more of these. For families, traveling planning is even more complex. To help, we've launched and introduced AI-driven property highlights that surface family-friendly features in the search.
We're leaning into seasonality and merchandising with great campaigns like our family getaway sale that show up just at the right time. Of course, during critical booking windows like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, we go big. In November, over 60,000 hotel partners participated. That kind of scale drives conversion and visibility and, of course, incremental revenue to you, our partners. At Expedia, packaging and bundling is our superpower. We know the travelers who book multiple parts of their trip with us: flight, hotel, activities, cars tend to book earlier, stay longer, and cancel less. We know 70% of travelers need multiple items for their trip. Over the past 12 months, we've launched new features around bundle and save. What does this mean to all of you? Our traveler came to us for one trip element.
As they look to add other elements to their trip, these are opportunities to merchandise your product and get additional bookings. These travelers are generally higher value to both of us. It is on us to make sure that we are taking the inventory and offers that you give us and sell those in the most effective way. That means putting the right offer in front of the right traveler at the right time. We also enable our partners, excuse me, our travelers, to see all their bookings in our amazing trip planner tool. You are going to hear more from Shilpa next about how we are bringing this together into a smarter, more connected trip planning experience.
I hope this gives you a window into how Expedia is building for the traveler and how we're creating more chances for our traveler to discover, plan, and book your product along the way. Also, hopefully, between Harry, Larry, and myself, we've given you a sense of how our brands are different and the distinct travelers that we attract. Of course, how do you choose between these three brands? It's a trick question. You don't have to choose. At Expedia Group, all our partners benefit from the 1 billion average monthly searches across our sites and apps. We deliver all those to you. We will never stop finding faster, smarter, more efficient ways to deliver value to you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being our partners.
Please welcome to the stage, Shilpa Ranganathan.
Good morning, everyone.
This is my first Explore as the Chief Product Officer at Expedia Group. Over 20 years ago, I was a product manager for expedia.com. I was just reflecting this morning. I had a flip-top Motorola phone and a Blackberry. Anyone? Or is it just me? It is interesting how much life has changed and how much technology has changed. After four years at Expedia back then, I moved to Microsoft across the pond and spent the next 16 years working on consumer and enterprise product that touched billions of people around the world. It is really fantastic to be back home at Expedia Group and to be here with you at Explore today on our shared mission to help travelers create wonderful memories. I have always believed that strong partnerships help us create better product experiences.
This, in turn, helps us create better customer and business value for both of us. Today, I have the honor of representing so much of the work that our teams have done, collaborating with you to deliver on this shared purpose. At Expedia Group, designing products that meet the needs of travelers, partners, and advertisers starts with listening. As a product maker, I have always been inspired by reactions, both good and bad, from people to all the products that I have helped build. These reactions inspire innovation. In turn, innovation thrives on feedback. In my experience, the best ideas are not built alone. They're shaped by listening, learning, and evolving.
I want to thank you because it's your feedback, the support calls that you've made, your conversations with our market managers, and our in-product survey responses that make us aware of our blind spots and help us adapt our experiences faster. Your feedback has improved our product in a meaningful way. Listening to feedback is a big part of why we launched Duet. It's our proprietary scoring system. It helps us measure delight, usability, experience, ease, and trust in our products. We use Duet to continuously monitor feedback and improve our key product experiences. I'm excited today to share what that means for all of you. For our advertising partners, show of hands so I can make sure I speak to you.
Whether you're a boutique hotel, airline, thank you, or a DMO, we've heard you say that driving awareness and visibility is essential to your business and that you need better tools to manage your ads and your bids efficiently. What we've done is we've applied AI to simplify this for you. We've got automated bidding and hero image selection for our travel ads. Your campaigns get optimized with greater precision. We've also applied AI to your guided recommendations. This includes predictive budget insights. We've built this directly into the travel ads dashboard so you can make more informed decisions to drive success. All of these enhancements are designed to help you simplify your campaigns, ease budget management, improve efficiency, and boost ad relevancy. This is a really exciting space for us. You heard Ariane talk about it as well.
We have all of the power in our team to continue to develop new features in this experience together and help you accomplish more for your business. Now, shifting gears a little bit, let's talk about our hotels and connectivity partners. We have heard from you that operational efficiency, optimizing revenue, and ensuring that your guests have great experiences is super critical. This is why we've rolled out reservation modification in Expedia Partner Central for our hotel partners. We've also rolled out the reservation management API for our connectivity partners. Now, of course, we love hearing from you. At the same time, with these features, you have the power now to modify your bookings, issue refunds, and protect revenue without contacting us directly. Hotels that have used the solution have seen a 75% drop in support-related reconciliation issues and have also seen improved reservation handling.
Let's talk about performance. When it comes to tracking performance, we've heard from you that our dashboard was overwhelming. We had a lot of data scattered across multiple pages. We have redesigned the performance page to be more intuitive. We've also included AI-powered summaries, which highlight key metrics and next best actions that are specific to you. We've taken out the guesswork here and just provided personalized, actionable insights. This feature has already started rolling out. We're going to continue to add new experiences throughout this calendar year. Lastly, one of my favorite features, our research and your direct feedback, was instrumental in creating a premium skip-the-line support offering exclusively for our hotel partners. Any of you that are hotel partners and are part of our VIP Access program, you get exclusive access to our priority support.
This means priority routing to our top service agents and faster resolution times. Now, we've already seen cases resolve 15% faster. I personally had an opportunity to spend time with some of our service center agents earlier this year. I can confidently say that you're in great hands with our priority agents. If you have a chance today, I'd love for you to see Alex Garro in the solution space so you can learn more about how to participate and enroll in our VIP Access program. Of course, we've talked a lot about what's in it for all of us together as partners. The real reason we're all here today is the millions of travelers that take trips and create wonderful memories every single day. I know this is top of mind for everyone. AI is rapidly evolving.
It's such an exciting time to be in travel. Building products using this technology is helping us move faster than ever before. We can now reimagine how travel is planned, booked, experienced. For me, what's really exciting is we can do this together by creating unique and differentiated experiences in our ecosystem. I'm going to start us off with filters. Through Duet, we've heard from travelers that having limited filter options is a huge pain point. Travelers want more filters. They want to be very specific with their needs. If you think back to your own lives booking travel, how many times with young kids have you requested rollaway beds or rooms with balconies just to have a little more space or even close to iconic landmarks? My personal favorite's Spa Properties, right?
Being able to actually add more filters in the current experience is how many of the others in the industry have chosen to solve this. There is a better way. What travelers are really looking to do is to choose their ideal stay using plain, specific, human-understandable language that can be matched to the unique attributes of your hotel. Let's take a look at AI filters. Travelers can now type in exactly what they're looking for to find their ideal stay. We love using our own products here at Expedia Group. I've been using this to plan a trip to Phoenix. What's important to me is finding a hotel with a spa, sauna, a balcony room, and something that's close to the Desert Botanical Garden that my friend's been telling me about.
Now, this sounds very simple when I say it because we understand human language really well. What we've done is we've used AI filters. My specific search has gotten matched against over 800 property and room filters and hundreds of thousands of location attributes like landmarks, transport hubs, and points of interest. Now, as a traveler, I didn't need to understand the complexity of the innumerable list of filters. Expedia does the hard work for me and showcases great choices for my trip. It's early days, but we're already seeing a 35% boost in conversion, lower cancellation rates. I believe this is a huge win-win for our travelers and for our hotel partners. Another great way for us to work together to match you with the right traveler is through your property content and descriptions.
Using AI, we can auto-generate unique property highlights based on the content and descriptions you've shared. Now, as I scroll through my search for the really nice spa hotels in Phoenix, AI will automatically highlight what's important to me: the property spa amenities, the guest rating, the vibe. It is all designed to give me confidence that the signals I've shared with Expedia have been incorporated into the search results. If I have a question like, what are the opening hours of the spa at a hotel, our AI-powered property Q&A can easily answer that, pulling from your property description and guest reviews. This is live on expediaandhotels.com today. Travelers using property Q&A convert and return twice as much. In the past 100 days alone, we've received almost 3 million questions, mostly about parking, airport shuttles, breakfast, and of course, my personal favorite, spas.
This is a winning feature. We could not have done it without you. We are going to continue to expand this and include many more properties this year. I am very excited about continuing to work on this with the team. I obviously had a lot to share. All of these features come together. I wanted to show you all of them in a single slide as well because what we really want to do is streamline each traveler's decision-making journey and give them the confidence to book faster. These are also great examples of how your feedback is shaping travelers' experiences. The team is excited to gather more insights from you during the various breakout and think tank sessions today. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your feedback. Now, let me switch gears a little bit.
We all know this. You've heard it from all of my colleagues that came here before. I'm sure you've experienced this too. A huge challenge travelers face is the complexity of planning a trip. We know from feedback that managing day-to-day itineraries, organizing reservations, all of this can be really overwhelming. There is so much more we can do to help travelers. Tracy alluded to this. Enter AI Itinerary Builder. This is an extension of our trip planning tool on Expedia. For the traveler, this uses AI to create personalized day-by-day itineraries based on their interests, saved favorites, and their bookings. It's complete with things to do, restaurant recommendations, places to explore, all of this housed in one easy place. Over 65% of travelers describe this experience as delightful.
What's really even more exciting is that it gives us another great opportunity to match travelers with your unique offerings. We're seeing twice as many travelers add activities to their trip through this product. This is live on Expedia right now. Much like everything else I've said today, we're going to continue to iterate on it, learn from feedback from travelers, and make it better throughout the rest of this year. We talked about the complexity of trip planning. Another stressful area is really booking with confidence. When travelers see prices, do they believe that it's a fair price? For many of us, travel is a big-ticket purchase. There are a ton of variables on how you can find the perfect trip. Sometimes it can be really hard to determine what value looks like for the money that you're paying.
I want to talk a little bit about flight deals. We launched this cutting-edge product on the Expedia app in January. It analyzes over 2 million flights a day. We use AI to flag fares that are at least 20% less than the predicted price. We all know a great price alone does not mean good value to customers. We also flag other attributes like flights with one or less stops, layovers of less than eight hours, flights that allow more than 24 hours in a destination. For most of us here, most of our travelers as well, booking a flight is the first step in planning a trip. We owe it to our travelers to get them not just the best deal, but also the best possible value. All of you here know that flights are a demand driver.
This action allows us to surface all the great offerings you provide: hotels, cars, activities, and much, much more. We're already seeing 15% higher conversion with these travelers, more frequent visits, and 50% more opt-ins for our price tracking alerts. Building on what Greg said earlier, I'm going to talk a little bit about Greg since I have a little bit of time. Greg's been my onboarding buddy. I said I just returned to Expedia. I can't see him in the audience. Maybe he's in the back somewhere. He's been wonderful because I've learned so much about the ecosystem we're in through him. At the end of the day, I think Greg mentioned this on stage as well. I hope you can really see how the power of advanced technology really sits at the core of our marketplace here.
What we really want to do is work alongside all of you, help travelers make informed choices, make it easier than ever for them to book a trip with us, and help us showcase your best products for the best possible price. One of the most important things we're also focused on is bringing travelers back. We believe that the key lies in building meaningful relationships with our travelers. Now, millions of travelers already turn to technology to plan their trips today. The ones who return time and time again do this because we actually know them very deeply. We know what they like. We know what they dislike. We're there when things go wrong. We help simplify complex decisions along the way. This is where we see the next frontier in online travel with generative AI.
With this technology, we can create a unique relationship with each traveler and do this at unlimited scale. Our ambition for our AI-powered experiences is to be the traveler's trusted companion and guide them throughout their journey. This is not new territory for us. I want to take you on a quick trip down memory lane. We have been leveraging conversational AI for over five years. We started this journey with our AI service agent in 2018, long before AI was hot, Expedia Group was there. Today, this service agent handles over 143 million conversations each year. We take questions. We take actions like canceling, changing bookings, processing refunds, all of this done through the AI service agent. The agent resolves over 50% of traveler queries. In the event human support is needed, AI seamlessly summarizes the query and hands it over to a call center agent.
Now, most importantly, travelers who self-serve report more than double the customer satisfaction of those who call in. Now, with the rise of generative AI, we were one of the first travel companies again to experiment with ChatGPT. We explored intelligent, human-like conversations that could offer personalized trip planning recommendations. Now, recognizing its transformative potential, last year, we invested and piloted Romie as well. Romie brought along a more natural, human-like personality and tone, asking follow-up questions, offering quick replies, and replacing voluminous text with visual cards. Now, compared to our earlier ChatGPT experience on the left, Romie significantly boosted engagement. We generated 50% more messages per conversation and a fivefold increase in richer conversations with our customers. Now, as we continue leaning into this new world of agent-like experiences, we also understand from feedback the tension this introduces.
This way of engaging with travelers is fundamentally different from how we have taught them to shop and book with us for almost 30 years. Now, one of the most important elements guiding how we are designing and building this product is the human, which is our traveler, and ensuring we bring them along with us on this journey. Now, we've heard from travelers that the new agentic experience is helpful for researching, narrowing down options. We've also heard from them that they do want to stay in control. Our research tells us that travelers are concerned about losing autonomy and also missing out on those aspects of planning that they genuinely enjoy. Most travelers want an agent that collaborates, asks questions, offers expert advice, and doesn't get involved in planning unless prompted.
We also learned that travelers want a single entry point to manage their existing booking as well as plan a new trip. This was an area that needed cohesion and improvement. It became clear to us that our travelers do not think in silos, and neither should our AI agent. Our latest release of our AI agent brings together conversational discovery, shopping, and servicing into a single, seamless entry point on the homepage. We are the first to pioneer this single entry point AI agent for both shopping and servicing. Yes, yes, thank you. By the way, these are not words on the slide. This is live on the Hotels.com app today. I would love for you to try it and give us feedback. It is really exciting for the team, really exciting for all of us.
Hopefully, your feedback can help make this even better in the future. Let's take a look at what's next here. If a traveler is planning their next trip, what our AI agent on Hotels.com will do is tap into our rich travel data and deliver smart recommendations with real-time pricing, guest reviews, and contextual imagery. If a traveler already has a booking with us, our AI agent offers contextual prompts that will guide them through any changes they want to make to their travel plans, reducing cognitive load. We are committed to continuously learning, experimenting, and investing in this space, rolling out expanded capabilities and improvements throughout this year. We will continue to evolve our AI products because for us, we believe that they help ease travelers into the new world of AI. We will deliver new value.
We will build trust and confidence in this new technology. That was a lot. I just wanted to summarize what we just saw. We talked about AI filters, property highlights, property Q&A. We talked about the AI itinerary builder. We talked about flight deals. I like to think of these as contextual AI products. What this means is that these AI features are in the flow of where customers are. We have really designed them to meet customers where they are in our product experience today. As you just heard, we will continue to transform and learn on our AI agent capabilities on the right so we can create new and innovative ways to plan, shop, book, and service the customer's whole trip with us.
The contextual AI features and the AI agentic experience will help us guide travelers to shop with confidence and dream in color about their next magical trip. As a product maker, what excites me the most is this opportunity this technological advancement provides. We will radically improve how we serve both our travelers and you. As you can see, your voices are already shaping our product experiences. I started with talking about listening. Listening is not a one-time effort. It is an ongoing dialogue. We created Expedia Voices. It is a dedicated research community for partners covering focus groups, one-on-one sessions, and surveys. You have probably already seen the Expedia Voices stands at the entrance. Please take the opportunity to share any thoughts you have on what you have seen today. I also would love for you to check out these experiences in the solution space.
My team's there too. We're very excited to get you some hands-on demos with the products directly. I hope you're as excited as I am about the transformative nature of AI for travel. Together, we can do the hard work so travelers do what they do best, which is simply enjoy their trip. I want to end my talk today with a quote from Jules Michelet, the 19th-century French historian, "The end is nothing. The road is all." Expedia Group, along with all of you in this room today, can shape the road for how humanity will travel in the future. Let's partner and build this road together. Thank you.
Please welcome to the stage Alfonso Paredes and Karen Bolda.
How are you? Hello. I can't believe you managed to convince me to be here today.
I know. It's great. Aren't you excited?
Yes, I'm very excited to be here with you. I'm super excited and delighted to be here with all of you here at Tech Explore. You have seen the video today. B2B travel is not just anymore about distribution. It's about creating new revenues. It's about building loyalty, expanding to new markets, and of course, attracting new customers and clients that probably by your brand you cannot do all by yourself. It's always, actually, it's always changing because consumer behavior is actually always evolving. Now, here in Expedia Group, we power some of the most trusted brands in the travel industry. We help them to adapt to that shifting in consumer behavior. Now, before I go, I'm going to share a little secret with everybody.
We have somebody here in the audience that is counting the amount of times Karen and I say the word AI. Whoever gets it right, one of us gets a free dinner. While you are counting the number of times that that happens, I will be here sharing with everybody else an exclusive announcement that we will be giving. Hopefully, you will be the first one to know. I hope so, if PR has done their job. That will be the case. Over to you.
Alfonso, I'm not going to talk about AI models. I'm just going to set the scene for your announcement. OK, good. Private label solutions is our B2B business. We provide travel technology and supply to businesses outside of Expedia Group who want to offer travel to their customers. We work with a lot of businesses.
We work with airlines and OTAs to offer complementary travel products. We work with financial institutions and retailers who want to offer travel to their loyal card members. No matter the business, we have a solution for you. Our APIs are fast, modular, and industry-leading, packed with the best rates and supply. They're embedded with AI and leading in innovation. This is a great option for OTAs, for corporate travel companies, and for B2B travel platforms. Our white label template is a complete website experience. This is powered using our AI platform. It takes your identity. It takes your loyalty program. We're seamlessly integrating that into this template. This is a great option for airlines, financial institutions, and retailers. Last is TAP. TAP is our travel agent program. With TAP, we're providing booking tools for thousands of advisors all over the world.
Now, with that technology, Karen, that you just mentioned, I think we managed to build actually one of the largest, if not the largest, B2B travel business in the world. I know that's a big statement. It is. Seeing is believing. Let me share some figures with you. Then you decide if we deserve an applause or not, OK? Last year, in 2024, we worked with 160,000 travel advisors. Today, with us, some of them, we work with 70,000 partners in crime, companies like American Express, like Mastercard, like Walmart. Through our systems, we actually got last year 18 billion API calls a day. All of that together got us to the magic number of more than 135 million room nights. Do we deserve a big applause or not?
Now, if you are a hotelier, and this is not a competition with our consumer brands, of course, you would love to know that some of these bookings come with an average booking value sometimes 85% above our consumer and below consumer brands, OK? Now, lots of partners, Karen, means lots of data. That means lots of connections. What we do at the end is simple. We connect the small, medium, and large properties to our network to generate billions of dollars in incremental revenues.
That B2B network spans the globe. You can reach travelers from all over the world. A boutique hotel in New York can now reach travelers in India, Southeast Asia without ever lifting a finger. Our B2B network also gives you access to loyalty program travelers, like credit cards, loyalty platforms, and retailers.
82% of consumers are interested in booking travel through a loyalty program as long as they're powered by a trusted travel partner. Travel is the number one way that people want to use these loyalty points. Nearly half of our B2B white label template bookings last year were paid for using loyalty as a currency. When your business offers lasting memories, members stick with you too.
Now, let's imagine you are one of our partners. You could just sell not just hotels or flights, OK? Let's imagine you could sell the entire trip. Let's imagine you are planning your next getaway. You're there. You could always be there, trusted, seamless, and essential. That is actually the future we're building today. Hopefully, with the right partner, you don't have to build it by yourself alone. Now, this is we're coming to the right moment.
We talked already a little bit about travel platform, consumer behavior. What I thought is that the next chapter for the B2B travel is actually going to require a lot. I asked Karen and the rest of the team, what if we start reimagining a full-stack travel platform where it's always going to be powered by AI and in constant evolution? We start working on that. Guess what? We have delivery. Karen, thank you so much for that. Thanks to you to the team. Today, I'm super proud. I would love to announce the creation and the piloting of four new APIs. The first API that will go live is our Car API. Our Car API will come with more yes, an applause for that.
Our Car API is going to go live with more than 45,000 vendors, more than 190 countries, and more than 110 brands. That will be the first one. We will go into our Activities API. That will be available soon as well, piloting as we speak. It will go live with more than 170,000 attractions across the world. The next one, and it is not the last one, is the Insurance API. Guess what? We already have it live in our white label template, piloting as we speak today on our travel agency platform. At the end of the year, it will also be live when it comes to our API. Last but not least, for our largest partner, an Air API. Now, if you do not think that is good enough for today, I am going to give you a little bit more.
Everything, everything that we will do, every single layer of the entire platform is going to be covered by, yes, AI and intelligence and ML, machine learning. Now, I'm going to give you two examples of that. The first one is going to be our merchandising tools. Our merchandising tools are the tools that help us boost conversion. We are also actually adding something we didn't do before from our media friends. We will be adding a sponsor listing. The second one is actually our AI personalized powering. That is actually going to come backed up, actually, with our 18 billion API calls that we receive a day.
All right, Alfonso, you said AI a few times. It's my turn to catch up with you. OK, good. Go for it. All these partners and all of these connections means we have a huge travel data set.
We can use that to train and fine-tune models, to optimize performance, and to tailor recommendations. Our B2B technology is using AI at every layer. All of the new tools and APIs that Alfonso just talked about, they've been designed for AI from the ground up. It's part of the core architecture. AI, it's how we build. It's not what we're bolting on. That way, our B2B partners, they can stay ahead of the competition as consumer behavior and technology like AI continues to evolve. Are you a hotel and you're looking for more demand from our B2B network? Come and talk to us about our B2B-specific rates and tools. Are you a business and you want to offer travel to your customers? Come and talk to us about our APIs, white label template, or TAP.
Finally, are you just curious about innovation, curious what we're doing in B2B? What's going on with AI? I love that. Early adopters, you shape our roadmap. Come and visit us in the private label solution space. You can hear more about all of these and all things AI.
OK, that won't for sure. Look, this is coming to an end. Let me just share with you something that a friend of mine said to me a few days ago. He said to me, "Alfonso, you have to spend 70% on the things that you have in front of you. And then 30%, you should spend that time looking at the future," which is something that I actually do quite a lot. I cannot say I've seen the future. What I can tell you for sure is that I spend looking at that.
The opportunity that we have ahead of us for you and for us is gigantic. It's huge. This is somebody that actually does this for a living. Look, when you are looking for your next trusted platform, a platform that can help you actually scale, diversify, and grow, this is it. Let's continue, please, working and developing the B2B travel. Let's do it together. Thank you so much.