EXPE
#Sure.
So in corporate travel, absolutely Egencia had a great quarter, so hats off to the Egencia teams for good execution there.
They did get a little bit of help from the Orbitz for Business integration and they actually completed the migration of those clients now, all of them, onto the Egencia platform.
So that was some of what you saw in their numbers.
But they did have a great organic quarter.
They did, however, continue to see evidence of that trade-down activity, particularly in Europe.
Volume held up nicely, but in general transaction values were down year on year.
And so there's no significant change on that front.
And I think, just to add on Egencia, the Egencia team now ---+ they have completed largely their VIA acquisition in the Nordics and now Orbitz for Business as well.
So they are a little mini case of what we described on the Expedia front.
I think that team finally can look forward to really steering their attentions on innovating and building that company.
And we are very excited about their position now competitively.
We have invested in their platform, in technology.
And if anything, we anticipate acceleration in growth for the Egencia brand in the back half of the year and especially going to next year.
So we are pretty excited about that team, where they've got into, and even more excited about where they are going.
As far as HomeAway and when we might see the inventory on the core Expedia brand, no update as of now but news upcoming.
Sure.
As far as TripAdvisor goes, no change as far as our view there.
Obviously, we are not in Instant Book at this point.
We think the product has improved as far as the brand representation of players who are working with Instant Book.
And so we will be in dialogue with TripAdvisor when we can, although I wouldn't expect anything to happen soon.
As far as the HomeAway new subscriptions and the change between PPB and subscription, I think it remains to be seen.
I do think that one way or the other, more and more players are going to come online and make their listings online bookable.
Whether they want to go through subscription or pay per booking is ---+ we are fairly neutral to it.
And really we just want to make it easier for our users to become online bookable.
And then, ones who have become online bookable are obviously over the long term, going to see the majority of demand in that marketplace because it's clearly what our consumers want.
And ultimately we think it's going to be a win-win in this marketplace when consumer expectations are met with homeowners and property managers.
That's really what this model change is all about.
Yes, I'd say on that one it's business as usual as far as adding the 25,000 hotels.
It's growth of about 20% on a year-on-year basis and I think that team is just getting into a rhythm.
As you know, we invested in our partner service team probably around two years ago.
We really started investing in the sales team.
And we continue to invest in that sales team, and they continue to deliver.
If there's any seasonality, I would say that we try to bring on a bunch of hotels prior to the big summer season when travelers are traveling.
So usually at the beginning of the year, Q1 and Q2, the team really tries to sign up as many hoteliers and partners as we can.
And probably during the summer we are a little more focused on managing rates and managing inventory and managing promotions so that we can deliver as much volume to our partners as we can.
But I think you should take the 25,000 as nothing unusual.
It's going to be business as usual.
And I think every quarter we are going to add some amount close to that number.
Whether it's a little bit lower or a little bit higher really doesn't matter.
I think from a long-term perspective you should look at supply addition as being a growth factor for this business.
And then when we add HomeAway inventory, that will be a little bit of a boost.
If our business, if the fundamentals of our business had changed as a result of what's going on with the chains, we might react.
We just haven't seen any fundamental change.
So chain-heavy markets, chain-light markets are really acting the same as they always have.
So for us it's about rolling forward with the formula that we have in place, which is adding to supply, driving conversion improvements on a site, using those conversion improvements to fund additional marketing and then keeping those new users in the marketplace through leading loyalty programs both at Hotels.com and Expedia.
So we will watch it.
The margin improvements are probably going to be a financial positive.
But there's not really an agenda on the margin side.
We are really trying to offer the best hotel at the best rate to our consumers, and that's what we are solving for.
Everything else flows from there.
I would say that in every market we are making sure that we have a wide selection of hotels that are providing us the best inventory at the best price.
So we do look at market by market basis.
Sometimes we will even look at neighborhood by neighborhood to make sure that where there are neighborhoods that are especially popular, we have a wide selection of hotels.
We work with those hotels on inventory and pricing and promotion and sort, etc.
And so far, the results have been good.
And it's something that we will watch quite closely.
Okay, great.
Thanks, everybody, for joining.
We will look forward to talking to you again next quarter.
<UNK>, any closing remarks.
Yes, just that we are very, very pleased with the activity that we see across the portfolio of brands that we have.
The new additions have clearly been terrific, the HomeAways, Trivagos of the world.
There's a lot of really good work going across the <UNK>.
We see the competitive environment as tougher than it ever has been.
The integration work that we are doing clearly has had some execution challenges and the macro environment, it's a tough one.
But this <UNK> has gained share year in, year out, regardless of the environment.
And I think with the strategic scope that we have now, with a scope in metasearch, alternative lodging and scale that we have with the many brands that we have within our OTA business, we are better positioned than we ever have been.
So we expect excellent execution on a go-forward basis and nothing less.
And I wanted to thank our employees for the great work this year and the great work coming up.
Thank you.
