Since travel began returning after the pandemic hit in early 2020, many have been opting for car travel – personal cars or rental cars – as a safer option to travel, increasing the popularity of the road trip. Many travelers were even willing to drive for over 8 hours to get to their destination, making it a timely opportunity for car rental companies to capture demand.    However, even as air travel returns as pandemic concerns decrease, the popularity of car as a mode of transportation for travel continues, both as a means of getting to a destination and travel within a destin ..read more

The travel industry faced many new challenges throughout 2022, including inflation, political concerns, and staffing issues, however the desire to travel remained paramount.   From the start of the year, we saw travelers’ excitement to get back to travel. In the first quarter of 2022, global search volume was up 25% quarter-over-quarter, led by double-digit growth in North America and Europe. Momentum continued and in the second quarter, lodging bookings reached the highest in company history.   Here at Media Solutions, we track these trends and traveler behaviors across ou ..read more

While we saw strong industry recovery in 2022 as borders opened and restrictions were lifted, traveler behaviors and preferences are continuing to evolve. That’s why we continue to mine our Expedia Group data and conduct broad research to understand travelers. For the latest, check out our newly released 2023 Traveler Value Index study, which sheds light on traveler behaviors we expect are here to stay, trends that were temporary, and what we see as new fluctuating factors.   For the first time, this study compares how consumers are thinking about and planning for travel and how indu ..read more

Travel intent is on the rise and we’re seeing increased hotel occupancy across every region. To capture demand, hotel marketing strategies should be in place to reach the ideal traveler at each stage of the booking process. In this post we discuss a variety of strategies hotels can use to attract travelers and highlight some global properties that are leading the way with strong, creative campaigns.   1. Boost bookings from business travelers Business travel demand continues to rise and these travelers are looking forward to being back on the road, attending industry events, meeting ..read more

At Expedia Group Media Solutions, we’re continuously growing and innovating to help our travel partners around the globe reach, engage, and convert travelers. The latest innovation we’re excited to introduce is a new and improved Native Advertising portfolio. In our last post on this topic, we discussed the importance of native advertising in general. In this post, we’ll dive into the specifics of what makes our Native Advertising solution unique.   What is native advertising?  As a reminder, native advertising is a form of advertising that matches the look and feel of the page ..read more

Since early in the pandemic, we have been analyzing and sharing the evolving behaviors of travelers as they return to travel. As pandemic fears wane and borders open, new sets of challenges have emerged, but travelers remain undeterred. As we shared in our last quarterly report, travel intent is on the rise and enthusiasm for travel has returned.   Based on Expedia Group’s first-party data from Q3 2022, we see that despite rising inflation, higher fuel prices, ongoing political conflicts, and natural disasters, consumers are committed to traveling and see it as more important now tha ..read more

To take advantage of the resurgence of international travel, Madeira Tourism International is partnering with us to showcase the beauty of Madeira and to drive demand from U.S. and key European markets through the “Behind Closed Doors” campaign.   Capturing pent-up demand for international travel   Our Q2 Traveler Insights Report showed that long-haul travel is on the rise, with a 50% increase in demand for long-haul flights year-over-year. And as restrictions ease, there has been an explosion of interest from U.S. travelers in a trip to Europe – during Q2 there was more than a ..read more

These days, much of our lives are documented online. Baby pictures, birthdays, holidays and, of course, picture-perfect sunsets or mouth-watering plates of food from far-flung locations can be found on any number of social media channels. Travel, by its very nature, has always been about social networking. Whether it’s having a spontaneous conversation at an espresso café in Italy or deciding to sky dive in Abu Dhabi with a group of like-minded thrill seekers, the experience of travel has taken on a new dimension. It’s grown from sharing the experience of your vacation upon your return to shar ..read more

For more than 20 years, Expedia Group Media Solutions has been connecting advertisers with travel audiences across the globe. The most important part of our business is our people and in this blog series, we spotlight the people who power our business to help you get to know the faces behind Media Solutions or MeSo, as we refer to ourselves. Our team of digital marketing and travel industry experts spans the globe, from the company headquarters in Seattle to offices in London, Miami, Singapore, Sydney, and more.    In this post, we talk to Jason Standifer, Senior Director of Pro ..read more

At Expedia Group Media Solutions, we’ve spent more than 20 years connecting advertisers with travel audiences across Expedia Group brands. We work with thousands of advertisers around the world and across multiple verticals to help them find success. Our partners include hotels, airlines, and destination marketing organizations like Coastal Mississippi.   To help the region recover from the devastating impact of COVID-19, Coastal Mississippi leveraged funding from the CARES Act and joined forces with Media Solutions to drive recovery and increase awareness with travelers of the Secre ..read more