Expedia Group, Inc. Common Stock Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026

First of all, thank you for inviting me. It is great to be here as a first-timer. When I took on this role just over two years ago, the priorities were clear. It was bring the consumer business back to faster growth, continue the strong performance of our B2B business, large, fast-growing business, and run the company more efficiently. If you look at our company compared to some peers, you can see that there is a gap in the margins. It was really about how do we accelerate the growth while running the company more effectively. We set out three strategic priorities to allow us to achieve that. The first was about creating more traveler value, because ultimately, travelers are our end consumers.

We need to be obsessed with how are we making sure that we are spending our time and efforts on things that matter to them. We have made great progress there. If you look at our supply, on Vrbo, we have got now 40% of our transactions that are happening on promotional rates. We are the only OTA with a complete air marketplace in the U.S. We were the first with Southwest, then with Allegiant. We are doing a ton of work on personalization in the product so that travelers can move faster from search to find to book. That is reflected in the fact that, for example, on Brand Expedia, we have the highest attach we have ever had. The first thing is really deliver more traveler value through the products, through supply, through servicing.

The second is to continue to accelerate and to invest in where we see the fastest growth opportunities. That translates into our investments in B2B. This is a business that's grown double digits for 20 quarters in a row. It means investing in these new AI experiences. AEO is small, but it's still our fastest-growing channel. Our third priority was run the business more efficiently, make every dollar matter, whether that's in our marketing spend, whether it's in our cost base. It's really just having a mentality of making every dollar matter. If you look at where we are now, two years later, we have accelerated the consumer business. We've expanded margins meaningfully, and we've actually doubled our free cash flow over the last compared to two years ago and now in a trailing 12-month basis.

All of that brings us to where we are today. The strategic priorities remain the same, and you can just feel in the company it's a simpler, faster, more agile company. There's still always much more to do, but those were really the foundational things we've done over the last couple of years.

Okay, I'm going to surprise everyone.

Well, I would say, you have to remember, travel is a massive industry. It's over $3 trillion. It's still fragmented. It's growing faster than GDP. Expedia Group is a company that's got incredible assets in our B2B business. Brand Expedia is the biggest consumer OTA brand in the U.S. We've got these brands in Vrbo and Hotels.com, that are wonderful brands as well. We've got a market and assets that are really attractive and that are right for growth. When I think about what's going to accelerate it, I do think about AI, and it's how are we using AI in our products? How are we using it to be more personalized?

As we've introduced things like natural language search in the product, while it's not yet delivering better conversion, it's giving us so much more information about travelers that over time will allow us to have deeper relationships with them. AI is allowing us to get more throughput, so the way our teams are using it internally, our tech and product teams are able to get 40% faster cycle times. Our marketing teams are using agentic solutions, both our own and those of our big ad partners, in order to have better creative, more campaigns, get better understanding of our returns so we can lean into where we see the best returns. AI can deliver growth through these new interfaces.

Whether it's ChatGPT, whether it's Claude, whether it's new personal agents, we see those as opportunities for our brands to show up and go meet customers where they are and then bring them back into our brands directly.