The ongoing wave of industry consolidation among OTAs-in-pursuit has focused the crowd's attention on two formidable fighters: Expedia and Priceline.
Both have developed into global juggernauts by both focusing on their own products and looking externally for great products to bring on. Priceline is arguably the larger of the beasts, given its trenchant approach to global domination.
Expedia has steadily risen in prominence, managing to both stave off larger incumbents and acquire competitors through a classic growth strategy of
Priceline is arguably the larger of the beasts, given its trenchant approach to global domination. Expedia has steadily risen in prominence, managing to both stave off larger incumbents and acquire competitors through a classic growth strategy of invest, acquire and consolidate.
Expedia is arguably playing catch up to Priceline, where the Booking.com acquisition set the scene for a complete transformation of the company's business.
But who's winning this round?
Strategy Analytics took to its AppOptix panel of 5,625 mobile phones to consider how these two players perform on mobile specifically. This is an area of immense growth, and an area in which travel brands are still under-represented: only .7% of all app sessions are in the travel vertical, and 80% of those sessions are focused on maps.
The analysis below shows how many users have each app installed (left side) and then the session count for users on each app (right side).
For those who have downloaded an Expedia or Priceline app, Expedia accounts for 49% of downloads and 60% of sessions. This means that Expedia users are more engaged and likely to use that specific app when compared with Priceline users.
The breakdown further into the specific device types and demographics shows a more nuanced result than simply the overall usage patterns.
Priceline actually has a negligible presence on iOS devices on this particular sample — it was not present on any of the 474 iOS devices surveyed here. It over-indexes on the Android side of the mobile ecosystem, as well as on smartphones and tablets overall.
The result above plays into the actual demographics of those using the Expedia and Priceline apps. Expedia appears to have an older, more affluent audience (and thus the higher install base on iOS) while Priceline is a more mainstream middle-class brand that also appeals to the budget-conscious.
Priceline risks losing the youngest generation if the brand doesn't do more to claw back into that all-important demographic by maintaining relevance and engagement for that generation as it heads into peak earning years. Both brands are neck-in-neck when it comes to those under 25. The report continues:
Much of this could be the result of the Priceline heritage of naming ones’ own price. At the time of its launch in 1997 naming your own price for travel empowered users and resonated with younger, tech savvy, price conscious segments.
Priceline’s continued strength with those 26 – 35 likely speaks to its heritage and the value of brand loyalty.
In recent years Priceline has downplayed the name your own price feature and as a result is failing to over-index with the younger generation where it has a similar composition as Expedia.
For comparative reasons, the team at Strategy Analytics also looked at what other apps either Priceline or Expedia users had installed. The results point to some cross-marketing opportunities to target each of these demographics.
The report notes that the Priceline users are far more likely to have local apps installed, such as Scout and YellowPages, suggesting that this group is interested in engaging with local directions and tips.
Overall, this analysis actually suggests that Priceline and Expedia are competing for slightly different slices of the traveler pie, meaning that the ongoing consolidation and business growth could occur simultaneously without a complete risk of cannibalization via direct competition.
In addition, each company is only addressing a small fraction of the overall global travel market so growth is still aplenty when it comes to attacking new addressable markets or growing share.
This fight lives on to see another round — with plenty more in store!
Full report here, and it's behind a subscription wall.
NB: Businessman boxing image courtesy Shutterstock.