In October 2020, Robin Lawther took a post managing Expedia’s Travel Agent Affiliate Program (TAAP). He was no stranger to the company — he’s been with Expedia for eight years, always on the B2B side — but it was a “low point” for the company and the travel industry as a whole as the pandemic raged, Lawther recalled.
Despite the volatility at the time, Lawther, today the vice president of Expedia TAAP, still sees the promise in a segment of Expedia’s business that serves travel advisors.
“We’ve always looked at this business and said, ‘Actually, we think this business should be a lot bigger,'” Lawther said. “We’ve always thought there was a lot of potential in it, we just never, up until that point, made the investment necessary in the business that it really deserved.”
Now, Expedia (No. 2 on Travel Weekly’s 2023 Power List), is changing that. In the past year, the company has increased its investment in TAAP both in terms of staff and technology, Lawther said. He called it a “foundational year” in terms of technology, with a number of features set to launch in 2024.
Expedia Group’s overall B2B business has continued to grow in recent