Expedia shocks workers with fresh round of job cuts

Expedia Group has become the latest tech company to join the round of layoffs that have been keeping the market abuzz with unease and instability. LinkedIn was flooded on Wednesday, Jan 28, with posts from laid-off employees who had set their profile pictures to 'Open to Work.'

In November, Expedia (EXPE) exceeded expectations in its Q3 earnings, posting $4.4 billion in revenue, a 9% year-over-year increase. More so, its booked room nights grew 11%, “driven by the fastest U.S. growth in three years and continued international strength,” noted the official release.

Expedia at a glance:

• Founded: Initially by Rich Barton as a division of Microsoft, and launched as an online travel service on October 22, 1996. It was spun off into an independent public company in 1999, according to Seattle Times.
• Brands: Expedia, Vrbo, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Trivago, and more
  Source: Expedia Group
• Revenue: $13.69 billion (2024)
  Source: Macrotrends
• Employees: 16,500
  Source: Bullfincher

The company noted a 12% increase in total gross bookings, and 26% increase in B2B, and 7% increase in B2C gross bookings, highlighting steady demand and resilient growth. 

However, on January 26, the online travel agency filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice with Washington’s Employment Security Department on January 28, 2026, confirming the elimination of 162 roles at its Seattle headquarters and among some remote staff.

The layoff will take place between April 1 and April 19, 2026. None of the roles impacted were represented by a union, and some roles eliminated were a “result of, or will result in, the relocation or contracting out of Expedia’s operations or the employees’ positions.”

Expedia is on two-year transformation

This latest round of layoffs is not isolated. In February 2024, Expedia cut nearly 1,500 roles following the unification of Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo, according to the company filing. The layoffs were a way of “restructuring actions to recalibrate resources in light of the Company’s organizational and technological transformation.” 

Related: Amazon delivers more bad news for workers before earnings

This restructuring resulted in pre-tax charges between $80 million and $100 million.

Again in 2025, Expedia reportedly laid off about 3% of its workforce, according to Skift. Now, in Jan 2026, this is Expedia’s third, and hopefully the last round of layoffs, in its technological transformation over the last two years. 

AI paradox: Cutting roles and rehiring

The affected positions span Expedia's organizational structure, primarily in engineering roles. These include software engineers, product managers, data engineers, machine learning engineers, to people related to user experiences and some senior leadership roles. The titles listed in the filing included individual contributors, as well as directors and vice presidents, highlighting the breadth of the restructuring.

Expedia has been enhancing its AI-driven experiences due to an ongoing increase in competition from peers such as Booking Holdings (BKNG), Airbnb (ABNB), and, surprisingly, Google (GOOGL), not in terms of travel traffic but in the use of AI to enhance the user experience.

Related: Pinterest layoff bombshell exposes brutal reality of AI apocalypse

While Airbnb offers experiences and services such as private chefs, photo sessions, and more, Booking Holdings uses AI for trip planning and to generate review summaries for a place. 

But they all felt threatened when Google launched its own AI travel tool, Canvas, which lets users organize and plan trips over time. It pulls information from Google Maps, such as photos and reviews, as well as its flight deals tools, to create the desired trip.

Expedia is not far behind, also continuously expanding to further improve AI experiences for its consumers. Evident in that, despite the job cuts, new openings are being posted on the company site, including data analytics and product designer roles for AI experiences. 

Currently, the company lists 95 open roles in the US and 179 overall positions in technology,  focused on AI experience, data analytics, data science, and AI foundations, among others.

The company's stock has risen 24% this quarter and 59% over the year. 

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