Expedia Group lays off staff in U.S. and abroad

Expedia Group has laid off staff in multiple departments, including travel operations, support, IT, recruiting, marketing and B2B services, according to a tip sent in to PhocusWire.

The company has not provided details of the layoffs, but sent a statement: “We continue simplifying and reprioritizing resources to achieve our business goals. This resulted in eliminating some roles and realigning our investments to ensure we can deliver great technology and experiences for our travelers. We remain confident in our strategy and are excited about our future as travel demand remains high.”

When asked how many employees have been affected, the spokesperson would not provide a specific number but said, “it is immaterial to the business.” 

Starting last Wednesday, July 12, there are multiple posts on social media that seem to come from people who were either laid off or who used to work on teams that were hit by layoffs.

On Twitter, the account @dnewcomer posted last Wednesday, “Ny [sic] whole team got laid off from Expedia today.”

On LinkedIn, Frantz Rochette, whose most recent job was “technical operations manager” at Expedia Group based in Prague, posted, “Our Service Desk team was laid off this week. … Unfortunately, the decision to let go of highly talented individuals was made due to economic reasons.”

And John Phan, who was a security engineer for Expedia Group, wrote, “Due to organizational changes within Expedia I am now actively looking for new security roles and opportunities.” 

Other posts have come from former Expedia Group employees providing support and outreach for their former colleagues. Flora Oprządek wrote last week, “Yesterday, I got the news that the GSD Team I used to work for at Expedia and the other IT departments in Prague was closed. “ And Aaron Shanas noted that, “Folks who were impacted are in the U.S. (Seattle, Springfield, and Akron) and Czech Republic (Prague).”

Also last week, Expedia Group announced it was pulling its supply of hotels and vacation rentals from Hopper, saying Hopper’s “features exploit consumer anxiety and confuse customers.” Meanwhile Expedia Group is in the midst of a broad publicity campaign for the launch of its One Key unified loyalty program that is now live in the United States and rolling out globally next year.

The company’s most recent earnings report, released in May and regarding the first quarter of this year, showed Q1 revenue of $2.7 billion, an 18% increase from the same period a year earlier.

This is a developing story and will be updated if more information becomes available.