The office of Ariane Gorin, chief executive officer of Expedia Group, features a large window overlooking a common area at the heart of the travel company's Seattle headquarters. That was on purpose.

When I took the role, I intentionally took this office," Gorin told The Seattle Times in an interview this month. "I wanted people to see me. I wanted to see people."

Since stepping into the CEO role in May 2024, Gorin has been focused on uplifting Expedia's consumer experience, while maintaining its commerce and connections with other businesses.

And her efforts appear to have paid off.

Expedia, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, saw its quarterly revenue rise to $3.4 billion from about $3 billion year over year, according to its latest earnings report. It recorded profits of $251 million this quarter — a stark difference from a loss of $70 million for the same time last year.

Shareholders are largely content with Expedia's performance.

"The stock has done well. It has its ups and downs," said Naved Khan, managing director at financial services company B. Riley Securities. "Generally speaking, it's headed in the right direction."

So what's next for the company?

Even with headwinds like global conflicts and the current economic crunch in the U.S., Expedia is pressing forward with the newest technology to improve travel. Gorin's plan includes offering more personalized recommendations and attracting new customers, partly through artificial intelligence.

"My vision is that we become the most traveler-centric company there is," Gorin said.

'In a much healthier place'

In the past three decades, Expedia has become a major player in the travel industry.

It was introduced by Microsoft as Expedia.com in 1996, though entertainment and information company USA Networks bought out Microsoft five years later.

Gorin has ties to both companies: She joined Expedia in 2013 after spending a decade at Microsoft.

"Our purpose then was to revolutionize travel through the power of technology," she said.

Gorin primarily worked on the company's business-to-business side, which involves travel suppliers, advertisers and partners. Khan referred to her as "the architect behind their B2B business."

Around the time of Gorin's hiring, Expedia focused on building itself up. In 2015, it made several acquisitions, including vacation rental marketplace HomeAway, a now-retired brand that owned Vrbo.

Now, the company's most well-known brands include Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo.

In 2020, the travel sector was hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic — and Expedia wasn't spared from the fallout. That year, international travel toppled by 72%, per the World Travel & Tourism Council, which represents the global travel and tourism private sector.

The pandemic accelerated the consolidation of the travel market, Khan said. "More of the brick-and-mortar players like travel agencies — they went out of business."

As such, the sector now revolves around three players: Expedia, Airbnb and Booking Holdings, which owns Booking.com, Priceline, KAYAK and other platforms.

When Gorin assumed the mantle at Expedia from former CEO Peter Kern in 2024, she said the company had a healthy, thriving B2B and advertisement business.

Meanwhile, "we had done open-heart surgery on the consumer business," Gorin said, through technology upgrades and the roll out of a loyalty program. "But somehow, we lost real sharp brand value proposition."

So her job was to spur profitable growth within the consumer business. Now, Gorin considers one major accomplishment of her tenure to be the progress she made on that front.

In the last quarter, revenue from business-to-consumer jumped 8% year over year. B2B skyrocketed 25%.

Gorin also had to pack up and move to Seattle in 2024. Originally from California, she is a dual French American national and spent the bulk of her career in European cities.

"It was important to me, and, I think, to our employees, that I was here," she said.

As of last year, travel numbers have bounced back in a big way. In 2025, international visitor spending hit a record $2.02 trillion globally, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council.

Even as American budgets tighten, Gorin sees an opportunity to serve every budget, with promotions and member savings available.

New developments continue. On April 29, Uber announced it is expanding into travel, and Expedia will serve as its exclusive hotel provider.

"This is a company that has improved its execution in recent years under the leadership of Ariane," Khan said.

AI's 'early innings'

The travel industry is turning to AI to take its products to the next level.

Khan said the sector is in the early stages of AI development. He's waiting to watch how Expedia and its competitors leverage it to boost their operations.

For example, AI algorithms and machine learning can help improve marketing, bookings, support and customer loyalty, according to global strategy consulting firm Simon-Kucher.

Many players see it as a worthy investment.

In the first half of last year, 45% of venture capital funding for the travel industry went toward travel startups with AI tools, per global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

At Expedia, Gorin said the team is testing its options.

"We are — to use a baseball analogy — in the early innings of that," she said.

Gorin intends to use AI in Expedia's products to ease customers' decision making. "It's about helping travelers in every step of their journey to make more informed and sometimes faster decisions," she said.

The company recently rolled out its natural language search in a limited capacity on Vrbo, Gorin said.

Say a traveler wants to look for a home for eight people with a hot tub in North Bend for the last week of June. The search will pre-fill the destination and the dates, then preselect the filters.

AI can help offer more personalized recommendations, Gorin said. She also wants to attract new customers through ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other chatbots.

But that comes with a few caveats. She underlined the importance of ensuring accuracy, given the bogus hallucinations experienced by AI models.

Expedia has assembled an internal AI advisory board that puts guardrails in place to maintain privacy compliance. "Travelers need to trust us," Gorin said.

The general consensus: AI holds sway over the industry's future.

"It's a highly competitive business," Khan said. "Every player has to keep up with the times.

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