At last week’s Explore 24 conference in Las Vegas, Expedia Group Senior Vice President, Lodging Partners, Hari Nair, spoke exclusively to HM about opportunities for hoteliers in the US$2.3 trillion travel market.
We know Expedia Group has valuable travel insights. What are you seeing in terms of the global travel outlook?
The global travel market is currently worth US$2.3 trillion and it will probably be somewhere in the region of US$3.2-US$3.5 trillion in the next four or five years. There is a lot of room for everybody. But if you break it down in terms of the players – OTAs, travel agencies, hotel websites and other players – all of them will be growing at a rate of somewhere between 6-10%. OTAs at the higher end of the range, 10%; hotels’ own websites, somewhere in the 8% range, but a really robust rate of growth. If you look regionally at North America versus Asia versus Latin America and EMEAA, those same numbers, you will see Asia growing at almost 13%…