Online travel giant Expedia Group is cutting 12% of its workforce or about 3,000 jobs, after a “disappointing” 2019, the company said.
Recently, Expedia Group’s leadership sent an email to its employees globally saying that it plans “to reduce and eliminate certain projects, activities, teams, and roles to streamline and focus our organization.”
In the mail, the company called the year 2019 “disappointing” on the basis of company’s performance and wrote that “we recognize that we have been pursuing growth in an unhealthy and undisciplined way.”
The mail also read that the company will begin notifying employees this week in geographies “where we have clarity” and in others, the company will begin consultations with employees and their representatives to discuss certain plans. In some countries, such consultations may be legally required.
According to a report by Skift, the company said that 12 percent of its “direct workforce” would be laid off, pending consultations in certain countries. Expedia Group counted a total of 25,400 employees, including part-timers, at the end of 2019. If you assume that Expedia might have around 24,000 full-time employees, then 12 percent would be around 2,880 staff.
Some 500 jobs out of a workforce of roughly 4,500 people in headquarters city Seattle are expected to be eliminated, the report added.
Expedia Group has offices around the United States, including Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, Austin, New Orleans, Miami, and San Francisco. It also has large facilities in the UK, India, Australia, Spain, Sweden, Australia, and the Netherlands, for example. The company may have more employees outside the U.S. than domestically.
In early December last year, the board pushed out CEO Mark Okerstrom and Chief Financial Officer Alan Pickerill in a clash over performance, and strategy. When Chairman Barry Diller and Vice Chairman Peter Kern assumed responsibility for the day to day operations of Expedia Group, analysts and people close to the company surmised that a period of cost-cutting and possibly asset disposals would be in the offing.
In addition to the layoffs, another sign of Expedia’s emerging realignment is that the company has brought together under one umbrella its corporate travel business, Egencia, with EPS (Expedia Partner Services), the company’s white-label business that powers travel services for numerous third-party websites.
Layoffs at big global corporations have now become a common cost-cutting and economic slowdown combatting measure. Recently, HSBC Bank had also notified that it will be laying off more than 30,000 of its employees after falling short on pre-tax expectations.
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