Social media content has shaken up the travel industry, and one of the biggest companies in that sector is responding with a tried-and-true strategy: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Expedia Group, the holding company that operates booking sites like Hotels.com and Vrbo alongside its namesake platform, has announced a partnership with Beautiful Destinations. That’s the name of a creative agency that’s best known for serving up high-res travel photography and videography on a popular Instagram account.
Beautiful Destinations builds its highly engaging social posts by sourcing travel shots from a large stable of contributors. The deal with Expedia Group will integrate Beautiful Destinations’ content library into E Studio, Expedia’s in-house creative unit. E Studio will use its new archive to better serve its advertising partners. The resulting posts will offer the polish of Beautiful Destinations content combined with a shoppable experience powered by Expedia’s technology.
“This unlocks a wealth of opportunity for our advertising partners and addresses an industry-wide need to deliver high-quality travel content at scale while driving real business impact”, said E Studio VP Angelique Miller in a statement. “It is another great example of how our travel media network empowers our partners to reach travelers, wherever they are on their path to purchase.”
Expedia Group is a big name in booking — its Q4 2024 results included $3.2 billion of quarterly revenue. Despite those gains, Expedia has risked falling behind as the travel industry shifts beneath it. For example, one marketing tactic Expedia employs is to position itself as a font of travel tips and expertise. But after 61% of respondents in an Expedia survey said that social media was their top source for travel inspiration, do legacy brands still command the authority they once did? Expedia’s recent layoffs would suggest the answer is no. As part of its announcement for the Beautiful Destinations deal, Expedia admitted that some companies in its space are “struggling to address” the need for “short-form, engaging videos.”
The solution to that problem involves a strategy that’s becoming more popular in the marketing world: Using creator content as creative assets in brand campaigns. With help from the Beautiful Destinations contributor network, Expedia can keep up with the demands of globetrotting consumers while bringing more attention to the booking services it has integrated into its in-house social media accounts.
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