In the second quarter of the year, major online travel companies significantly boosted their marketing expenditures, signaling a strategic shift towards diversification.
Airbnb, Booking Holdings, Expedia Group, and Trip.com Group collectively invested $4.6 billion in sales and marketing during Q2, a rise from $4.2 billion in the same period last year. This increase underscores the intensifying competition within the online travel sector and highlights the aggressive strategies employed by these agencies to capture consumer interest.
Airbnb, in particular, allocated $573 million to sales and marketing, marking a substantial 21% of its revenue and an increase from $486 million in Q2 2023. Chief Financial Officer Ellie Mertz noted during the company’s quarterly earnings call that the firm is seeing incremental improvements in performance marketing while maintaining “extremely high efficiencies.”
Looking ahead to Q3, Airbnb anticipates that its marketing spend will grow at a faster rate than its revenue, driven by its expansion efforts into new markets, including Colombia, Peru, Argentina, and Chile.
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