After closing out 2025 with a fourth quarter that exceeded expectations, Expedia Group is targeting growth by expanding its business-to-business partners, adding to its supply, integrating artificial intelligence and strengthening consumer brands.
"We're confident that our work to make our products even more personalized and intuitive, along with our work on supply, customer service and loyalty, will keep in our competitive advantage," CEO Ariane Gorin said on Expedia Group's earnings call Thursday. "We enter 2026, our 30th year as a company, well-positioned to extend our momentum."
In the fourth quarter, both revenue and gross bookings on Expedia grew 11%, while booked room nights grew 9%. Lodging gross bookings increased 13% in the fourth quarter.
Scott Schenkel, chief financial officer of Expedia Group, said the company's fourth quarter 2025 "exceeded the high end of our guidance range. ... Our outperformance was driven by sustained market strength through year end and disciplined execution across the company. We grew share in the U.S. for both hotel and VRBO, and held lodging share globally."
For full-year 2025 results, Expedia Group posted an 8% increase in revenue and gross bookings, with adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization increasing 19%. The company repurchased 9 million shares for $1.7 billion in 2025.
Gorin gave an update on Expedia Group's AI strategy, which continues to have a focus on internal operations optimization to, as she said, "give our team superpowers and make our offerings to travelers and partners even more competitive."
"As we grow our business and increase our use of AI, we're keeping a close eye on cost, and we've been able to optimize our cloud spend through technology improvements and more disciplined cloud operating," she said.
Expedia Group's tech optimization aligns with the company's focus on delivering value to customers, and Gorin emphasized the importance of recent website and app updates that have made quite a difference to user experience.
"Our sites and apps are 30% faster than they were a year ago," she said. "We've upgraded our checkout path and added new payment options, giving travelers more flexibility and making booking even easier."
She also emphasized how the company has improved automation of help center capabilities across brands, so users can make travel changes independently.
Expedia Group is also homing in on its marketing efforts, Gorin said.
"We're taking a more disciplined and data-driven approach to our marketing, and it's even more grounded in customer insights. ... The work that we've done to sharpen our brand value propositions with stronger creative makes our spend more effective," she said.
Gorin pointed specifically to Hotels.com's relaunch featuring its new mascot, a bell-shaped bellboy. She said the company's Super Bowl commercial for Hotels.com was among the most watched.
As far as what the future holds, Expedia Group is anticipating gross bookings growth between 10% to 12% in the first quarter and a 6% to 8% increase in bookings for the full-year 2026.
The company's outlook includes a similar pace of growth for revenue, with an expected 11% to 13% increase in the first quarter and a 6% to 9% growth in revenue for the full year.
“Our guidance reflects strong bookings momentum as we enter Q1 while remaining appropriately cautious, given ongoing macro uncertainty," Schenkel said, explaining that the higher end of the outlook implies stability while the lower end reflects "a more cautious view."
As of press time, Expedia's stock was trading at $227.24 per share, up 11.8 year over year. The NASDAQ Composite was up 13.3% for the same period.