Industry trackers are reporting that Expedia Group has begun a fresh global workforce reduction affecting roughly 1,650 employees, close to 10% of headcount. Expedia itself has not issued a press release confirming that specific figure, so it’s worth treating the number as a tracked estimate rather than an officially confirmed count until the company’s own disclosures or a WARN filing catch up.
What is well documented is that this would be Expedia’s fourth distinct round of cuts in roughly two years. The pattern started in early 2024, when the company eliminated nearly 1,500 roles as it merged the Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo brands into a single organization, a restructuring that generated $80–100 million in pre-tax charges. Skift reported the company trimmed about 3% of staff again in 2025. Then, in late January 2026, Expedia confirmed a restructuring of its product, technology, and finance teams; a subsequent Washington state WARN filing put a number on part of that round, listing 162 permanent layoffs at its Seattle headquarters, concentrated in senior product and engineering titles, effective between April 1 and April 19, 2026.
Notably, the cuts have coincided with strong underlying performance. In the company’s most recent full-quarter results cited alongside the layoffs, Expedia reported $4.4 billion in revenue, a 9% year-over-year increase, with gross bookings up 12% to $30.7 billion. CEO Ariane Gorin has described AI as a “step function” opportunity for improving team efficiency, and the company has simultaneously been advertising more than 250 open roles even as it cuts others — a pattern several tech employers have followed this year, trimming certain functions while hiring aggressively into AI-related and other strategic roles.
Expedia competes directly with Booking Holdings and Airbnb, and increasingly with AI-native travel search features built into Google’s search products, a dynamic that’s pushed most major online travel companies to reallocate spending toward AI tooling and away from traditional headcount-heavy operations.