Shift Take

Booking revenues exceeded pandemic levels and brought back nearly 4,000 employees. Expedia reduced its workforce again in 2024 after completing a technology migration.

Dennis Schaal

Much has been written about whether major travel companies have recovered from the pandemic, but what about employee rosters?

Booking Holdings laid off 6,100 employees, or 23% of its workforce, in 2020 and froze hiring until the end of 2021.

According to the latest quarterly financial filingBooking has strengthened its staff. Booking increased its employee positions by 19.2% to 24,200 as of September 30, 2024, compared to December 31, 2021.

If only Booking Holdings hadn’t outsourced approximately 2,700 call center jobs Majorel in 2022, the current workforce would have exceeded the 2019 level of 26,400.

At the end of 2023, the geographic mix of Booking’s workforce was Europe (47%), Asia Pacific (36%), North America (15%) and Rest of World (2%).

Booking Holdings’ revenue has more than recovered from the pandemic. Revenue in the third quarter of 2024 was nearly $8 billion, up 60% from the third quarter of 2019.

Holdings employee reservation 2019-2024

Note: The 2024 figure is by the end of the third quarter, not the end of the year like the others.
Source: Reservation Holdings/SEC

Expedia’s workforce is well below 2019 levels

By the end of 2023, Expedia has increased its workforce by 15.5% from pandemic lows to 17,100 employees. This was about a third lower than in 2019. (Expedia numbers include full-time and part-time employees. Booking numbers are full-time employees only.)

In early 2024, after completing a multi-year technology migration, Expedia announced that it is laying off about 9% of the workforce. With those cuts, its headcount would be about 15,600 — only about 5.4 percent higher than pandemic lows.

One of the reasons for Expedia’s 2024 layoffs is that it ramped up its workforce to work on a multi-year technology migration involving the Hotels.com and Vrbo brands, and laid off some of those employees when they were done.

Expedia Group Employees 2019-2024

Note: Expedia’s 2019 figure includes full-time and part-time employees. Expedia hasn’t reported any 2024 headcount yet, but we estimated them based on the announcement in early 2024 that it would lay off 9% of its staff.
Source: Expedia Group/SEC

Expedia started to reorganize before the pandemic

The reduction of the Expedia group in 2020 and 2021 was not only related to the pandemic.

In February 2020 – before the potential impact of the pandemic came to the fore – Expedia Group chairman Barry Diller characterized the company as a “bloated organization”.

In early 2020, Expedia announced plans to cut 12 percent of its workforce, and then made additional layoffs later in the year. It ended 2020 with 19,100 employees, and then cut another 23% of its headcount in 2021.

The initial redundancies were part of a reorganization of the Expedia Group that combined teams from its various brands. The company has also sold and discontinued other brands.

As of the second quarter of 2024, Expedia Group revenue of $3.558 billion was within striking distance of the comparable period in 2019 before the pandemic, but had not reached the previous threshold. The company reports its third-quarter financials on Thursday.

Expedia employees are located in more than 50 countries.