What’s in this article:
- Vrbo (owned by Expedia) has been growing in travel in this environment
- Expedia is pushing into the Vrbo brand – spending more on marketing than ever before
- In hopes of having successful travel outcomes, Vrbo plans to focus on customers in its marketing strategy
Surprisingly or not, Vrbo has been performing exceptionally well throughout the pandemic.
Short for Vacation Rentals By Owner, Vrbo is Expedia’s only brand that’s growing right now. As Airbnb’s main competitor, this is a major battleground for Expedia. And they aim at winning it with doubling down on CRM Marketing’s basics.
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“We have grown share in all of our strongest markets. And obviously, it’s because it’s a use case that people really like. You know, families are trying to get away. People are trying to get away. They want to be in an enclosed space that they can control,” Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern said about Vrbo.
A lot of focus has been put into Vrbo’s marketing plan, and there’s a lot more in store for the brand, too. For starters, Vrbo will strive to be “a force for good,” by reducing its environmental impact. Definitely, something that customers are expecting from brands nowadays.
“We also acknowledge as a company that what we do has a tax on the environment. And we are refocusing ourselves on the tax that travel creates on the environment, particularly and initially around tools and information to help our travelers and help our suppliers make better choices to drive better outcomes for the environment,” Kern said.
Vrbo is also deepening its commitment to Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) – a pledge that many brands have taken to create lasting social change. Not to mention a key factor for creating strong and healthy relationships with customers that we commonly address here at PostFunnel.
To make the brand accessible among a wide variety of customers in the travel industry, Kern said: “Expedia Group has made some bold, ambitious goals for ourselves around diversity and inclusion. And we want to drive that through everything we do, every time we roll a product out, every time we think about building a product and a consumer experience.”
Finally, Expedia has reinvested an enormous amount of energy in rebuilding all its tech and products for customers to weather the negative effects of the pandemic. The redesign of its tech platform will continue to be an area of focus for the company in the upcoming year.