Expedia Group Inc (EXPE) 2020 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon. My name is Christine, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Expedia Group Third Quarter 2020 Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Thank you.

下午好。我叫克里斯汀，今天我將擔任你們的會議接線員。此時，我想歡迎大家參加 Expedia Group 2020 年第三季度電話會議。 （操作員說明）謝謝。

I'll now turn the call over to Michael Senno, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer.

我現在將電話轉給投資者關係副總裁兼財務主管 Michael Senno。

Thanks, Christine.

謝謝，克里斯汀。

Good afternoon and welcome to Expedia Group's financial results conference call for the third quarter ended September 30, 2020. I'm pleased to be joined on the call today by our CEO, Peter Kern; and CFO, Eric Hart.

下午好，歡迎參加 Expedia Group 截至 2020 年 9 月 30 日的第三季度財務業績電話會議。我很高興今天我們的首席執行官 Peter Kern 加入電話會議；和首席財務官埃里克哈特。

The following discussion, including responses to your questions, reflects management's views as of today, November 4, 2020, only. We do not undertake any obligation to update or revise this information. As always, some of the statements made on today's call are forward-looking, typically preceded by words such as, we expect, we believe, we anticipate, we are optimistic or confident that, or similar statements. Please refer to today's earnings release and the company's filings with the SEC for information about factors which could cause our actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements.

以下討論，包括對您問題的回答，僅反映了管理層截至 2020 年 11 月 4 日今天的觀點。我們不承擔任何更新或修改這些信息的義務。與往常一樣，在今天的電話會議上發表的一些聲明是前瞻性的，通常會在前面加上“我們預計”、“我們相信”、“我們預計”、“我們樂觀或有信心”或類似的聲明。請參閱今天的收益發布和公司向美國證券交易委員會提交的文件，了解可能導致我們的實際結果與這些前瞻性陳述存在重大差異的因素的信息。

You will find reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures discussed today in our earnings release, which is posted on the company's Investor Relations website at ir.expediagroup.com. And I encourage you to periodically visit our IR website for other important content.

您會在我們的收益發布中找到非 GAAP 措施與今天討論的最具可比性的 GAAP 措施的對賬，該發布發佈在公司的投資者關係網站 ir.expediagroup.com 上。我鼓勵您定期訪問我們的 IR 網站以獲取其他重要內容。

Unless otherwise stated, all references to cost of revenue, selling and marketing expense, general and administrative expense and technology and content expense exclude stock-based compensation. And all comparisons on this call will be against our results for the comparable period of 2019. Please note that depreciation expense is now reported in a separate line item and prior periods have been restated to reflect this change.

除非另有說明，否則所有提及的收入成本、銷售和營銷費用、一般和行政費用以及技術和內容費用均不包括基於股票的補償。此次電話會議的所有比較都將與我們 2019 年同期的結果進行比較。請注意，折舊費用現在在單獨的項目中報告，並且之前的期間已經過重述以反映這一變化。

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Peter.

有了這個，我會把電話轉給彼得。

Thank you, Michael, and good afternoon, everybody. I hope you're well. We appreciate we are not the most newsworthy thing going on right now in the country, but thank you for spending a little time with us. And hopefully, we can help give you some more color on our quarter.

謝謝邁克爾，大家下午好。我希望你很好。我們很高興我們不是該國目前發生的最具新聞價值的事情，但感謝您花一點時間與我們在一起。希望我們可以幫助您為我們的季度增添更多色彩。

I'll start by saying, as I said before, that travel generally performed in this period as everyone has expected. And in general, closings, openings, worries over the pandemic have the exact influence you expect. But we were pleased to see in the third quarter that with stabilizing travel trends and significant improvements on our cost structure, we were able to post markedly improved performance.

正如我之前所說，我首先要說的是，這一時期的旅行總體上如大家所料。總的來說，關閉、打開、對流行病的擔憂會產生你預期的確切影響。但我們很高興在第三季度看到，隨著旅行趨勢的穩定和成本結構的顯著改善，我們能夠發布顯著改善的性能。

I'm going to get into some of the internal workings, including margin expansion, which actually Eric will cover in his remarks. But first, I just want to make a few comments on the recent trends in travel.

我將進入一些內部運作，包括保證金擴張，實際上埃里克將在他的評論中提到。但首先，我只想對最近的旅遊趨勢發表一些評論。

What we saw over the third quarter was basically a stabilization, as I said. July was down in lodging gross bookings, net of cancellations. This was a function of 2 things. You may recall there was a slight increase in COVID cases being reported then, and that had some impacts on travel, along with Vrbo for us, which had a very, very strong June. And that strength subsided a bit. It still was strong in July. So July, again, lodging gross bookings, net of cancellations, was [down] (corrected by company after the call) about 65%. And in the months that ensued, that got to the low to mid-50% range down. So a reasonable improvement, a steady improvement, and that obviously helped with our third quarter results.

正如我所說，我們在第三季度看到的基本上是一種穩定。扣除取消後，7 月份的住宿總預訂量有所下降。這是兩件事的函數。您可能還記得當時報告的 COVID 病例略有增加，這對旅行產生了一些影響，對我們來說 Vrbo 也有一些影響，它在 6 月表現非常非常強勁。而那股力量也減弱了一些。它在七月仍然很強勁。因此，7 月，扣除取消取消後的住宿總預訂量[下降]（公司在電話會議後更正）約 65%。在接下來的幾個月裡，下降到 50% 的低到中等範圍。所以一個合理的改進，一個穩步的改進，這顯然有助於我們第三季度的業績。

Vrbo continued to be quite strong, as I said, coming off that June high which was a lot of pent-up demand. But the third quarter was strong. We were up year-over-year, which branded travel business, of course, is terrific in the world we're living in. And we think it bodes well both because we brought in a lot of new customers and we believe those customers will have long-term value for us. And it's helping to land the Vrbo brand and making people more familiar with it.

正如我所說，Vrbo 繼續保持強勁勢頭，擺脫了 6 月的高點，這是大量被壓抑的需求。但第三季度表現強勁。我們同比增長，品牌旅遊業務當然在我們生活的世界中非常棒。我們認為這是個好兆頭，因為我們帶來了很多新客戶，而且我們相信這些客戶會對我們有長期價值。它有助於打響 Vrbo 品牌並讓人們更加熟悉它。

On the hotel side, North America actually has been pretty steady and improving since July. But Europe for us, in general, has been a little rockier. Cases were rising in the ensuing months. And of course, in the last week or 2, we've seen lots of changes, and I'll get into that in a minute. So North America was generally positive during the period in conventional lodging and Europe was slightly subsiding over that period.

在酒店方面，北美自 7 月以來實際上一直相當穩定並有所改善。但總的來說，歐洲對我們來說有點不穩定。在接下來的幾個月裡，案件不斷增加。當然，在過去一兩週內，我們看到了很多變化，我稍後會詳細介紹。因此，北美在此期間的傳統住宿總體上是積極的，而歐洲在此期間略有下降。

Air continues to lag lodging. Obviously, international air is very injured at the moment. But I think generally air has been improving. We've seen that across domestic air. And we think that people are getting more comfortable with the safety protocols and understanding the safety of flying, and we think that's good news. And obviously the airlines all reported and they have higher hopes, subject to this third wave, of course, for the holiday season.

空氣繼續滯後於住宿。顯然，國際航空此刻很受傷。但我認為總體而言，空氣一直在改善。我們已經在國內空氣中看到了這一點。我們認為人們對安全規程越來越熟悉，對飛行安全的了解也越來越多，我們認為這是個好消息。顯然，航空公司都報告了，他們對假期的第三次浪潮抱有更高的希望。

The last couple of weeks, which we're all acutely watching, again, have had the impact that, I would suggest, that pretty much most of us would expect, which is to say, Europe has been acutely hurt by it, but North America has remained pretty strong. It's down, but still showing relative strength compared to Europe. Obviously, in our case, that's a little beneficial given our mix of business towards North America, but nothing can be known yet about how these trends will continue. And of course, if there are more closures, if there are closures in the U.S. in any way or if there are other lockdowns in Europe, that will have an impact on the overall business.

過去幾週，我們都在密切關注，再次產生了影響，我建議，幾乎我們大多數人都預料到了，也就是說，歐洲受到了嚴重傷害，但北美國一直很強大。它有所下降，但與歐洲相比仍顯示出相對強勢。顯然，就我們而言，考慮到我們面向北美的業務組合，這有點有利，但目前尚不清楚這些趨勢將如何繼續。當然，如果有更多的關閉，如果美國以任何方式關閉或歐洲有其他封鎖，那將對整體業務產生影響。

I want to talk a minute about market share because you may have observed that in some cases, market share has been shifting around in weird ways during COVID. And for us, certainly, that is true. There's a few things to note here. One is obviously alternative accommodations have been quite strong, not just for us but for others. Obviously, that's been great news for Vrbo. We've been a big beneficiary of that, but that has shifted lodging share significantly across geographies.

我想談談市場份額，因為您可能已經觀察到，在某些情況下，市場份額在 COVID 期間一直在以奇怪的方式變化。對我們來說，當然，這是真的。這裡有幾點需要注意。一個顯然是替代住宿非常強大，不僅對我們如此，對其他人也是如此。顯然，這對 Vrbo 來說是個好消息。我們一直是其中的一大受益者，但這已經顯著改變了不同地區的住宿份額。

We've also seen that there's a lot of unique use cases during the pandemic, much more not only domestic and not only secondary and tertiary market travel, but very purpose-driven travel: going to visit family, needing to do specific work, needing to go to one of these small markets. There's much less discovery going on and price shopping. And there seems to be more direct bookings in these smaller market independent hotels as people are calling to make sure they're open, make sure that safety protocols, et cetera, are happening. And conversely, the places where we typically have the most share of spend like big urban markets, international travel, international packaged travel, et cetera, have obviously been among the most impacted. So we have seen some share shift in that.

我們還看到，在大流行期間有很多獨特的用例，不僅是國內旅行，而且不僅是二級和三級市場旅行，還有非常有目的性的旅行：探親、需要做特定的工作、需要去這些小市場之一。正在進行的發現和價格購物要少得多。這些較小的市場獨立酒店似乎有更多的直接預訂，因為人們打電話來確保他們開放，確保安全協議等正在發生。相反，我們通常在大城市市場、國際旅行、國際包價旅行等支出份額最大的地方，顯然受到的影響最大。所以我們已經看到了一些份額的變化。

And I want to reiterate and I've said it before that, we've combined our performance marketing teams during this period. And we are doing a lot of plumbing work to retool and recalibrate all the algorithms and everything we do so that we can optimize for multi-brand instead of brand against brand. There's a lot of work going on. It is a significant effort. But during this period while we do that and while there is so much uncertainty in the market, we clearly have a bias towards profitability, which you've probably seen in our numbers, and a bias towards caution given that cancellation rates and other things are very volatile and very hard to predict.

我想重申，我之前已經說過，我們在此期間合併了我們的績效營銷團隊。我們正在做大量的管道工作來重新調整和校準所有算法以及我們所做的一切，以便我們可以針對多品牌而不是針對品牌進行優化。有很多工作正在進行。這是一項重大的努力。但在我們這樣做的這段時間裡，儘管市場存在如此多的不確定性，但我們顯然偏向於盈利能力，你可能已經在我們的數據中看到了這一點，並且考慮到取消率和其他因素，我們偏向於謹慎。非常不穩定，很難預測。

So we are not chasing share that might be unprofitable or the brick wall we might run into with closures and COVID cancellations. We're trying to be very prudent here while we rebuild everything on the theory that we will be at our end state by the time COVID is over or more precisely, travel trends come back to more normal levels. And we believe, as I said before, that once that plumbing is rebuilt and once we're ready for multi-brand that we will be able to not only maintain but grow share at similar or better profitability as we have had before.

因此，我們不會追逐可能無利可圖的份額，也不會追逐我們可能因關閉和 COVID 取消而遇到的障礙。我們試圖在這裡非常謹慎，同時我們根據理論重建一切，即到 COVID 結束時我們將處於最終狀態，或者更準確地說，旅行趨勢會恢復到更正常的水平。正如我之前所說，我們相信，一旦管道重建，一旦我們為多品牌做好準備，我們不僅能夠保持而且能夠以與以前相似或更好的盈利能力增加份額。

Moving on to what we are doing internally. Again, I won't belabor this, but we're focused on several areas, one of which I've talked about before. But that is our brands and how we join those groups together. We're focused on brand differentiation, clearly showing and demonstrating what those value propositions are to the market and how they differ from one another, making choices about which brands we market where geographically and how we lean into all the marketing channels for different brands. And there's a lot of work going on for the coming out of COVID and through COVID brand marketing side.

繼續我們在內部做的事情。同樣，我不會贅述這一點，但我們專注於幾個領域，其中一個我之前已經談到過。但這就是我們的品牌以及我們如何將這些群體結合在一起。我們專注於品牌差異化，清楚地展示和展示這些價值主張對市場的意義以及它們之間的差異，選擇我們在地理上營銷哪些品牌以及我們如何利用不同品牌的所有營銷渠道。在 COVID 的出現和通過 COVID 品牌營銷方面，還有很多工作正在進行。

We're obviously leaning heavily into Vrbo. We think it's having a moment. All the research shows that it has gained share and it has gained awareness, and there's some very positive things going on with that brand.

我們顯然非常傾向於 Vrbo。我們認為它有一個時刻。所有的研究表明，它已經獲得了份額並獲得了知名度，並且該品牌正在發生一些非常積極的事情。

But we are also looking out, and we'll start to leg in. We're obviously being cautious given the last couple of weeks' news. But we will leg into our other brand marketing, including Hotels.com. And Expedia just signed a long-term sponsorship with Liverpool, the soccer team in the U.K., that we think will be important to landing that brand and pushing it in the U.K. and EMEA particularly. And there's a brand-new raft of creative coming out on the back end of the virus. So a lot of work going in there, to be really clear on what we're doing, where we're doing it and how we're investing behind each brand.

但我們也在關注，我們將開始介入。鑑於過去幾週的消息，我們顯然持謹慎態度。但我們將涉足其他品牌營銷，包括 Hotels.com。 Expedia 剛剛與英國足球隊 Liverpool 簽署了一項長期贊助協議，我們認為這對於該品牌的落地以及在英國和歐洲、中東和非洲地區的推廣非常重要。在病毒的後端出現了一批全新的創意。所以很多工作都在那裡進行，要真正清楚我們在做什麼，我們在哪裡做，以及我們如何投資每個品牌。

We're also heavily interested and excited about the opportunity in the B2B side and in helping our supply partners. We've talked before about our Expedia Partner [Solutions] (corrected by company after the call) business. We are a leader in this space, and we feel very good about our opportunity here. In fact, we believe we can grow share here during COVID as we help our B2B partners come out faster and help more partners over time. We have expanded our partnership on the supply side with Marriott in terms of their wholesale distribution partnership. And we are extending that partnership to similar partnerships to optimize distribution with other chain partners. And we think that's going to be a great opportunity to help our supply partners and also build our B2B business.

我們也對 B2B 方面的機會和幫助我們的供應合作夥伴非常感興趣和興奮。我們之前談過我們的 Expedia 合作夥伴 [解決方案]（電話後由公司更正）業務。我們是這個領域的領導者，我們對這裡的機會感到非常滿意。事實上，我們相信我們可以在 COVID 期間增加這裡的份額，因為我們幫助我們的 B2B 合作夥伴更快地出現並隨著時間的推移幫助更多的合作夥伴。我們在批發分銷合作夥伴關係方面擴大了與萬豪在供應方面的合作夥伴關係。我們正在將這種夥伴關係擴展到類似的伙伴關係，以優化與其他連鎖合作夥伴的分銷。我們認為這將是一個很好的機會來幫助我們的供應合作夥伴並建立我們的 B2B 業務。

So a lot of exciting things going on there, including extending a lot of the technological advances we've made on our platform. Things we've talked about before, like our voice, our conversation platform, which we had externalized to some of our B2B partners. And now we've done that with our advertising platform, media services, MeSo, we call it. So there's a number of places we've been able to take advantage of the improvements technologically in our B2B business, so lots more to go there.

因此，那裡發生了很多令人興奮的事情，包括擴展我們在平台上取得的許多技術進步。我們之前談過的事情，比如我們的聲音、我們的對話平台，我們已經將其外化給我們的一些 B2B 合作夥伴。現在我們已經通過我們的廣告平台、媒體服務 MeSo 做到了這一點。因此，在我們的 B2B 業務中，我們已經在很多地方利用了技術上的改進，所以還有很多地方可以去那裡。

And finally and perhaps most importantly, the underpinning technical platform and architecture that we have talked about, that work continues. It is big, structural, foundational work. It is part of what helps us on the efficiency side. We've had great wins on the cloud and licensing areas, which we've talked about before, but there's a thousand small wins across the business. I'm getting out of the business of talking about little wins here and there until they're really noticeable and impactful. But the whole idea of putting that platform together, rearchitecting it for the future was so that we could be agile, make these improvements that we'll win across much more of the business, not just the brands, but the B2B businesses. And we're starting to unlock those things, and obviously a lot more work to do here. But we're doing as much as we can, as fast as we can while we suffer through COVID.

最後，也許是最重要的是，我們已經討論過的基礎技術平台和架構，這項工作仍在繼續。這是一項龐大的、結構性的、基礎性的工作。這是幫助我們提高效率的一部分。我們在雲和許可領域取得了巨大的勝利，我們之前已經談到過，但在整個業務中也有上千個小胜利。我不再到處談論小胜利，直到它們真正引人注目並產生影響為止。但是，將這個平台放在一起，為未來重新設計它的整個想法是，這樣我們就可以變得敏捷，做出這些改進，我們將贏得更多的業務，不僅僅是品牌，還有 B2B 業務。我們開始解鎖這些東西，顯然還有很多工作要做。但是，在我們遭受 COVID 的痛苦時，我們正在盡我們所能、盡可能快地做。

And with that, I will turn it over to Eric, except to say that we obviously can't control what's going on there, out there in the travel market or in the scientific community. We are hoping for all the same things you are in terms of vaccine and other treatments that will help us get through this. We do believe that people have been, up until this recent wave, getting increasingly comfortable with the idea of traveling. This will obviously have an impact, this recent wave, but it will remain bumpy and unpredictable. And we can't control that.

有了這個，我會把它交給埃里克，除了說我們顯然無法控制那裡發生的事情，在旅遊市場或科學界。在疫苗和其他治療方面，我們希望與你們一樣，這將幫助我們度過難關。我們確實相信，在最近的這波浪潮之前，人們對旅行的想法越來越滿意。這顯然會產生影響，最近的這一波浪潮，但仍將是崎嶇不平且不可預測的。我們無法控制。

In the meantime, our teams are highly focused internally. And I'll just say, I want to thank our teams that have done tremendous work in a very unpleasant environment and really done a lot to help our customers, help our suppliers, help the company do better, and also importantly done some very hard work around how we manage our human resources and how we structure our organization. And unfortunately, we had to make some significant moves on people, which is, of course, the worst work we do. But the teams have done a terrific job, and I'm very optimistic about the work they're doing for the future.

與此同時，我們的團隊高度專注於內部。我只想說，我要感謝我們的團隊，他們在一個非常不愉快的環境中完成了巨大的工作，他們真的會做很多事情來幫助我們的客戶，幫助我們的供應商，幫助公司做得更好，而且重要的是，他們做了一些非常努力的事情圍繞我們如何管理我們的人力資源以及我們如何構建我們的組織進行工作。不幸的是，我們不得不對人員採取一些重大舉措，這當然是我們所做的最糟糕的工作。但是這些團隊做得非常出色，我對他們為未來所做的工作非常樂觀。

And with that, I'll turn it over to Eric.

有了這個，我會把它交給埃里克。

Thanks, Peter. And thanks, everyone, for joining as well.

謝謝，彼得。也感謝大家的加入。

While we continue to see significant year-over-year declines in our business in the third quarter, taking into account the impact that COVID is having on travel, our financial performance was better than we expected, with over $300 million in adjusted EBITDA and reaching essentially cash flow neutral in September for the first time since February. As you know and I've discussed in previous quarters, we are keenly focused on driving margin expansion, which largely falls within 3 buckets: resetting the fixed cost base, reducing variable cost of revenue and increasing marketing efficiency. I'm going to touch on each of those individually.

雖然我們在第三季度繼續看到我們的業務同比大幅下滑，但考慮到 COVID 對旅行的影響，我們的財務業績好於我們的預期，調整後的 EBITDA 超過 3 億美元，達到自 2 月份以來，9 月份的現金流量基本保持中性。正如你所知和我在前幾個季度討論過的那樣，我們非常專注於推動利潤率擴張，這主要分為三個方面：重置固定成本基礎、降低可變收入成本和提高營銷效率。我將單獨討論其中的每一個。

So first on fixed cost base. As you'll recall, we started the year targeting $300 million to $500 million in annualized savings. And we were tracking ahead of that amount as of our last call. Since then, we've identified additional headcount reductions in certain areas and incremental opportunities across the P&L to drive efficiency in areas like real estate and software and licensing.

所以首先是固定成本基礎。您可能還記得，我們今年年初的目標是每年節省 3 億至 5 億美元。截至我們上次通話時，我們正在追踪這一數額。從那時起，我們確定了某些領域的額外裁員以及整個損益表中增加的機會，以提高房地產、軟件和許可等領域的效率。

We are now targeting $700 million to $750 million in annualized run rate savings compared to our 2019 exit rate, and we've already actioned over $550 million. As you project this forward, please keep in mind, we'll have annual increases in the remaining cost base and also make targeted investments in some areas. But overall, we've made great progress on fixed cost. And longer term, our platform operating model will position us to scale the business far more efficiently going forward.

與 2019 年的退出率相比，我們現在的目標是每年節省 7 億至 7.5 億美元的運行率，我們已經採取了超過 5.5 億美元的行動。當你預測這一點時，請記住，我們將每年增加剩餘成本基礎，並在某些領域進行有針對性的投資。但總的來說，我們在固定成本方面取得了很大進展。從長遠來看，我們的平台運營模式將使我們能夠更有效地擴展業務。

On variable cost of revenue, there are 3 primary areas we're targeting. First is on our payments platform. We're lowering our transaction fees and improving economics on our virtual cards that we use for merchant payments. Second is we're extending the conversations platform to handle more customer calls through self-service and virtual agents to lower our customer service costs. And we're reducing our variable portion of cloud spend with the optimization efforts we've already executed and will continue to do so.

在可變收入成本方面，我們瞄準了 3 個主要領域。首先是在我們的支付平台上。我們正在降低我們用於商戶支付的虛擬卡的交易費用並提高經濟性。其次，我們正在擴展對話平台，通過自助服務和虛擬代理來處理更多的客戶電話，從而降低我們的客戶服務成本。我們正在通過已經執行並將繼續這樣做的優化工作來減少雲支出的可變部分。

Given the variable costs are volume-based, these savings will not be fully evident until we return to normalized operating levels. We still have work to do in these areas, but I wanted to give some context. But if we overlay what we believe we can achieve on these initiatives on our 2019 business level, they would collectively deliver savings of over $200 million, which is incremental to the $700 million to $750 million fixed cost savings that I mentioned previously.

鑑於可變成本是基於數量的，在我們恢復正常運營水平之前，這些節省將不會完全明顯。我們在這些領域仍有工作要做，但我想提供一些背景信息。但是，如果我們將我們認為可以在 2019 年業務層面實現的這些舉措疊加起來，它們將共同節省超過 2 億美元，這比我之前提到的 7 億至 7.5 億美元的固定成本節省有所增加。

The third area of margin improvement is around marketing efficiency. As we've discussed, we expect the combination of operating at higher ROIs, the benefits of lower variable cost and optimization across our brands to result in lower direct marketing expense as a percent of revenue over time.

利潤率提高的第三個方面是圍繞營銷效率。正如我們所討論的那樣，我們預計以更高的投資回報率運營、降低可變成本和優化我們品牌的好處將隨著時間的推移降低直接營銷費用佔收入的百分比。

Turning to our Q3 results. The impact from COVID-19 continue to distort some areas of our P&L, but the bookings improvement that started in the middle of Q2 led particularly by Vrbo and the progress on cost initiatives led to the improved profitability in the quarter. ADRs in our lodging business increased 8% due to solid ADR growth at Vrbo and a mix shift to Vrbo, which carry significantly higher ADRs than hotels. Hotel ADRs declined double digits, but improved sequentially from Q2.

轉向我們的第三季度業績。 COVID-19 的影響繼續扭曲我們損益表的某些領域，但第二季度中期開始的預訂量改善，特別是在 Vrbo 的帶領下，以及成本計劃的進展導致本季度盈利能力提高。由於 Vrbo 的穩健 ADR 增長以及向 Vrbo 的混合轉變，我們住宿業務的 ADRs 增長了 8%，Vrbo 的 ADRs 明顯高於酒店。酒店 ADR 下降兩位數，但較第二季度有所改善。

Revenue per room night grew 14% in the quarter, also boosted by the mix shift to Vrbo. In addition, with Vrbo's shift to merchant of record over the past year, we now recognize transaction fees as revenue, which added to the growth in revenue per room night. Do keep in mind that the fees recognized as revenue are largely offset by merchant expenses and cost of revenue. And lastly on take rate, the product mix shift from air to lodging as well as the incremental merchant-related revenue at Vrbo contributed to the elevated 17% revenue take rate in the quarter.

本季度每間夜的收入增長了 14%，這也受到向 Vrbo 的混合轉變的推動。此外，隨著 Vrbo 在過去一年轉向記錄在案的商家，我們現在將交易費確認為收入，這增加了每房晚收入的增長。請記住，確認為收入的費用在很大程度上被商家費用和收入成本所抵消。最後，在採用率方面，產品組合從航空轉向住宿，以及 Vrbo 與商家相關的收入增加，導致本季度的收入採用率提高了 17%。

Moving on to cost. The progress we made on the margin expansion initiatives I've mentioned are becoming evident in our P&L. On overhead costs, which include indirect selling and marketing, tech and content and G&A collectively declined 29%. Excluding trivago, about 2/3 of the overhead savings stemmed from our fixed cost savings initiatives, with the balance from temporary cost savings related to the current environment.

繼續成本。我們在我提到的利潤率擴張計劃方面取得的進展在我們的損益表中變得越來越明顯。在包括間接銷售和營銷在內的間接費用方面，技術和內容以及 G&A 共同下降了 29%。不包括 trivago，大約 2/3 的間接費用節省來自我們的固定成本節省計劃，其餘部分來自與當前環境相關的臨時成本節省。

On cost of revenue, they declined 32%. Two items impacted the year-over-year comparison. First is incremental transaction costs related to Vrbo's shift to merchant of record, which are highest in Q3 due to Vrbo's seasonality. And then second, they were offset partially by a benefit from the disposal of Bodybuilding.com. Excluding these 2 factors, cost of revenue was down 40% year-over-year. And as we noted, we expect to deleverage on cost of revenue until booking volumes return closer to normalized levels.

在收入成本方面，他們下降了 32%。有兩個項目影響了同比比較。首先是與 Vrbo 轉向記錄商家相關的增量交易成本，由於 Vrbo 的季節性，該成本在第三季度最高。其次，它們被 Bodybuilding.com 的處置所帶來的收益部分抵消了。排除這兩個因素，收入成本同比下降 40%。正如我們所指出的，我們希望在預訂量恢復到接近正常水平之前降低收入成本。

On direct marketing, we continue to see leverage on direct marketing expenses. We are prudently increasing activity and brand marketing campaign and in performance marketing options where we see demand, but intend to remain disciplined and lean toward profitability.

在直接營銷方面，我們繼續看到對直接營銷費用的影響。我們正在謹慎地增加活動和品牌營銷活動以及我們看到需求的績效營銷選項，但打算保持紀律並傾向於盈利。

On our segment results, our retail segment performed significantly better than B2B. Retail benefited from growth at Vrbo in the quarter and the higher mix of business in North America, which has seen stronger recovery than Europe. Meanwhile, the slower recovery in corporate travel impacting Egencia is a drag on the B2B segment.

在我們的分部業績中，我們的零售分部表現明顯好於 B2B。零售業受益於本季度 Vrbo 的增長以及北美業務的更高組合，北美的複蘇比歐洲更強勁。與此同時，影響易信達的商務旅行複蘇放緩拖累了 B2B 業務。

On cash flow and balance sheet, our reported free cash flow was nearly negative USD 1 billion in Q3. The biggest driver was approximately $670 million working capital impact from Vrbo's merchant bookings, mainly due to a seasonal decline in Vrbo's deferred merchant bookings given the increased stays over the summer. But as we've noted, Vrbo's merchant bookings largely flows through restricted cash. If you exclude the working capital impact from Vrbo merchant bookings, free cash flow was approximately negative $325 million as the seasonal working capital impact from the decline in deferred merchant bookings, plus other cash items such as CapEx and interest, more than offset our adjusted EBITDA in Q3.

在現金流和資產負債表上，我們報告的第三季度自由現金流接近負 10 億美元。最大的驅動因素是 Vrbo 的商戶預訂對營運資金產生了約 6.7 億美元的影響，這主要是由於 Vrbo 的延期商戶預訂因夏季入住增加而出現季節性下降。但正如我們所指出的，Vrbo 的商家預訂主要通過受限現金進行。如果排除 Vrbo 商家預訂對營運資金的影響，自由現金流約為負 3.25 億美元，因為延期商家預訂減少對季節性營運資金的影響，加上資本支出和利息等其他現金項目，足以抵消我們調整後的 EBITDA在第三季度。

On deferred merchant bookings, they declined a total of $1.4 billion in Q3 to $3.2 billion or $2.5 billion excluding deferred loyalty. Vrbo was the biggest contributor to the decline as it ended Q2 with a relatively higher balance, and the seasonality of its stayed room nights is even more weighted to Q3 than the rest of our business. In addition, booking windows have been significantly shorter than usual, which reduces our outstanding deferred booking balance.

在延期商戶預訂方面，他們在第三季度總計減少了 14 億美元，降至 32 億美元或 25 億美元，不包括延期忠誠度。 Vrbo 是下降的最大貢獻者，因為它以相對較高的餘額結束了第二季度，而且與我們其他業務相比，其入住間夜的季節性對第三季度的影響更大。此外，預訂窗口比平時明顯縮短，這減少了我們未結清的延期預訂餘額。

On our capital structure, as we noted last quarter, in July we opportunistically raised $1.25 billion in debt. Subsequently, we repaid the $750 million notes that matured in August and used the funds raised in July to repay $1.25 billion of our outstanding revolver draw to reduce interest expense. We currently have $650 million drawn on our revolver.

正如我們在上個季度指出的那樣，在我們的資本結構中，我們在 7 月份機會主義地籌集了 12.5 億美元的債務。隨後，我們償還了 8 月到期的 7.5 億美元票據，並使用 7 月籌集的資金償還了 12.5 億美元的未償還循環貸款，以減少利息支出。目前，我們的左輪手槍已提取 6.5 億美元。

As at the end of the third quarter, unrestricted cash and short-term investments totaled $4.4 billion. Excluding the capital markets activity I just mentioned, cash declined roughly $325 million, similar to our free cash flow, excluding the Vrbo merchant activity. And total cash was essentially flat in September for the first time in February. In addition, amounts held in restricted cash and other noncash balance sheet assets covered nearly 60% of our deferred merchant booking balance, excluding deferred loyalty.

截至第三季度末，不受限制的現金和短期投資總額為 44 億美元。不包括我剛才提到的資本市場活動，現金減少了大約 3.25 億美元，類似於我們的自由現金流，不包括 Vrbo 商業活動。 9 月份總現金基本持平，這是 2 月份的首次。此外，受限現金和其他非現金資產負債表資產中持有的金額占我們遞延商戶預訂餘額的近 60%，不包括遞延忠誠度。

Looking ahead to Q4 adjusted EBITDA, as you can imagine, it's a very difficult environment in which to forecast or predict the business and also will result in a wider range of outcomes. With our current trading volumes and what we're seeing in the business, we do expect Q4 adjusted EBITDA to be negative.

展望第四季度調整後的 EBITDA，正如您可以想像的那樣，這是一個非常困難的環境來預測或預測業務，也將導致更廣泛的結果。根據我們目前的交易量和我們在業務中看到的情況，我們確實預計第四季度調整後的 EBITDA 為負。

There are 2 primary factors that are contributing to it. One is Q4 is seasonally a quarter with lower revenue and profit, so it's just lower relative to our cost basis. And then number two, given the recovery in lodging bookings has essentially plateaued relative to the recovery over the summer months, we currently expect the revenue decline to be in a similar range as it was in Q3.

有兩個主要因素促成了它。一個是第四季度是一個收入和利潤較低的季節性季度，所以它相對於我們的成本基礎而言較低。其次，鑑於住宿預訂的複蘇相對於夏季的複蘇基本趨於平穩，我們目前預計收入下降幅度將與第三季度相似。

In closing, this remains a tough environment for our business, and we're going to be dealing with the COVID impact for the foreseeable future. But as Peter mentioned, we have clear priorities that our teams are making great progress on, and we're confident the actions we're taking now will benefit us through the recovery and over the long term.

最後，這對我們的業務來說仍然是一個艱難的環境，我們將在可預見的未來應對 COVID 的影響。但正如彼得所提到的，我們有明確的優先事項，我們的團隊正在取得重大進展，我們相信我們現在採取的行動將使我們在復蘇和長期中受益。

Operator, we're ready to take our first question.

接線員，我們準備好回答我們的第一個問題。

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Lloyd Walmsley from Deutsche Bank.

（操作員說明）您的第一個問題來自德意志銀行的 Lloyd Walmsley。

Two, if I can. First, just wanted to make sure I understood you correctly earlier. When you said, I think you said the core fixed cost savings target is now $700 million to $750 million. But then you said you've been able to reduce variable costs, if I heard you right, which overlaid on 2019, for example, would be an additional $200 million in savings, so approaching $1 billion on kind of a normalized basis. So the question is just, did I catch that right? And does it feel like you're getting to the kind of edges of the scope of savings there given the magnitude we're talking about?

兩個，如果可以的話。首先，只是想確保我之前正確理解了您的意思。當你說的時候，我想你說過核心固定成本節約目標現在是 7 億到 7.5 億美元。但是後來你說你已經能夠減少可變成本，如果我沒聽錯的話，例如，疊加在 2019 年，將額外節省 2 億美元，因此在某種標準化基礎上接近 10 億美元。所以問題只是，我沒聽錯嗎？考慮到我們正在談論的規模，你是否覺得你已經達到了儲蓄範圍的邊緣？

And then the second one would just be, as you work to bring all the marketing data from separate brands into kind of a consolidated kind of new data storage for marketing, is it early enough that you can see some early learnings or is it too soon to say? And any sense for the timing on when you guys will be in a place where you feel good about that transition?

然後第二個就是，當你努力將來自不同品牌的所有營銷數據整合到一種新的營銷數據存儲中時，是不是足夠早，你可以看到一些早期的經驗，還是太早了說？對於你們什麼時候會在一個讓您對這種轉變感覺良好的地方的時機有什麼感覺嗎？

Yes. Peter, do you want me to take the first? Yes. I'll take the first, you take the second.

是的。彼得，你想讓我拿第一個嗎？是的。我拿第一個，你拿第二個。

So on the first, yes, you did hear correctly. So the $700 million to $750 million is on a fixed cost basis. It's in relation to the $300 million to $500 million that we spoke of earlier in the year. Of the $700 million to $750 million, we've actioned $550 million of that. So we are feeling like we are making good progress against it.

所以首先，是的，你沒有聽錯。因此，7 億至 7.5 億美元是按固定成本計算的。這與我們今年早些時候談到的 3 億至 5 億美元有關。在 7 億至 7.5 億美元中，我們已經採取了其中的 5.5 億美元。所以我們感覺我們在對抗它方面取得了很好的進展。

We, of course, continue to leave no stone unturned. And just as we continue to work through it, we get more costs that we've identified. We get confidence in those that we get better line of sight in. And then also obviously we've actioned a fairly large percentage of it.

當然，我們繼續不遺餘力。正如我們繼續努力解決它一樣，我們得到了更多我們已經確定的成本。我們對那些我們獲得更好視線的人充滿信心。而且顯然我們已經採取了相當大比例的行動。

So yes, it's the $700 million to $750 million on a fixed cost basis. And then the incremental $200 million on the variable costs of sales, which then approaches, to your math, approximately $1 billion in savings.

所以是的，這是固定成本基礎上的 7 億至 7.5 億美元。然後增加 2 億美元的可變銷售成本，根據您的數學計算，這將節省大約 10 億美元。

Now you mentioned it, but I just want to reiterate it as well. That is on the 2019 exit rate, if you will, so that those numbers presume that we're back in a range that is approximately at the 2019 levels.

現在你提到了，但我也想重申一下。如果你願意的話，那是在 2019 年的退出率上，所以這些數字假設我們回到了大約在 2019 年水平的範圍內。

And then lastly, there will be some offsets to that over time. You can imagine inflation on contracts or increases in headcount costs, et cetera. So there will be some offsets, but we feel pretty confident in the numbers that we're going after and the teams are doing a great job.

最後，隨著時間的推移會有一些抵消。您可以想像合同通貨膨脹或員工成本增加等情況。所以會有一些抵消，但我們對我們追求的數字非常有信心，而且團隊做得很好。

And I guess there was the last part of your question just around, are we reaching the edge of it? And I would say, we're still flipping over rocks, but it's diminishing returns to a certain extent. So I would say the range that we shared with you is sort of the probability of just where we think that we'll get.

我想你的問題的最後一部分就在眼前，我們是否已經到了邊緣？我要說的是，我們仍在翻石，但它在一定程度上正在減少收益。所以我想說我們與你分享的範圍是我們認為我們會到達的地方的可能性。

Yes. And Lloyd, I'll just jump in on the other question. I would say the answer is no. It's not wired together yet in a way that we can see the early wins. I think we are getting closer, but it's not simply a matter of taking 3 different groups and putting them together. I've mentioned on previous calls that we've been also consolidating all our data and the dozen -- 17 data lakes into hopefully one soon. And all of these things are kind of linked together.

是的。勞埃德，我將跳入另一個問題。我會說答案是否定的。它還沒有以我們可以看到早期勝利的方式連接在一起。我認為我們越來越接近了，但這不僅僅是將 3 個不同的小組放在一起的問題。我在之前的電話會議上提到過，我們也一直在整合我們所有的數據和十幾個——希望很快將 17 個數據湖合併為一個。所有這些事情都是聯繫在一起的。

So there's a lot of great work going on. I think we are getting closer. And I'm excited about what we're going to be able to see when we can see the granular level of detail and profitability by customers, by geos, by everything, which we haven't had the granularity we'd like. And that has made us, I would say, a blunter instrument than we'd like to be. And we believe there's significant big gains from getting us all wired together. And that again is why we're willing to make short-term trade-offs to do that important work to get that done, but we haven't seen any early returns yet. It will be a while still.

所以有很多偉大的工作正在進行。我想我們越來越近了。當我們可以看到客戶、地理位置、所有方面的詳細信息和盈利能力時，我們將能夠看到我們所沒有的粒度，我感到很興奮。這讓我們，我想說，成為一個比我們想要的更笨拙的工具。而且我們相信，將我們所有人聯繫在一起會帶來巨大的收益。這又是為什麼我們願意做出短期權衡來完成這項重要工作以完成這項工作，但我們還沒有看到任何早期回報。還需要一段時間。

Okay. Impressive job on the cost side, guys.

好的。伙計們，在成本方面令人印象深刻的工作。

Yes. And just one other quick add to that, and thanks for the question again is, we are still taking the actions to achieve those numbers. So I just want to make sure as you're building those in, there's the lens of, we need the volume to come back to see particularly on the variable cost side. And we are still actioning these. And as I mentioned, the $550 million on the fixed cost side is going to take us still some time to get to the gap of that in the $700 million to $750 million. And the same thing on the cost of revenues as well. It will take us a bit of time to get there, but that's what we're shooting for and what we think we'll get.

是的。還有一個快速補充，再次感謝這個問題，我們仍在採取行動來實現這些數字。因此，我只是想確保在構建這些內容時，有一個鏡頭，我們需要數量回來查看，特別是在可變成本方面。我們仍在採取這些行動。正如我所提到的，固定成本方面的 5.5 億美元將花費我們一些時間來彌補 7 億至 7.5 億美元之間的差距。收入成本也是如此。我們需要一些時間才能到達那裡，但這就是我們的目標，也是我們認為我們會得到的。

Your next question comes from the line of Naved Khan from Truist Securities.

你的下一個問題來自 Truist Securities 的 Naved Khan。

Yes, just a couple, one on the cost side. Eric, you called out the incremental $200 million in variable cost savings, and you named 3 areas. If you try to think about the relative magnitude of savings in each of these areas, how would you stack them up or a number of them?

是的，只有一對，一個在成本方面。埃里克，你提出了 2 億美元的增量可變成本節約，並指出了 3 個領域。如果您嘗試考慮這些領域中每一個領域的相對節省量，您將如何疊加它們或將它們的數量疊加起來？

And then I had a question on the gross bookings side. So you talked about plateauing in October versus Q3. Is that overall for the business or just the U.S.? How should we think about that? And is that plateauing on gross bookings or on net basis? How should we think about that?

然後我有一個關於總預訂量的問題。所以你談到了 10 月與第三季度的平穩期。這是對企業的總體影響還是對美國的影響？我們應該如何考慮？是在總預訂量上還是在淨預訂量上趨於平穩？我們應該如何考慮？

Yes. I'll take the first one. And Peter, perhaps you can take the second one, but I'm happy to take it as well.

是的。我要第一個。彼得，也許你可以接受第二個，但我也很樂意接受。

But on the cost of revenue, there's 3 components. There's the conversation platform, the cost of savings, the credit card and the variable [cloud] (added by company after the call). And I would effectively put them in that order to a certain extent. But I think the one that has the largest opportunity for us is on the conversation platform.

但在收入成本方面，有 3 個組成部分。有對話平台、儲蓄成本、信用卡和變量[雲]（公司在通話後添加）。我會在一定程度上有效地將它們按此順序排列。但我認為對我們來說機會最大的是對話平台。

We are historically primarily a phone-based contact center type of conversation with customers and with our supply partners as well. And with the technology that we've developed, we have the ability to move a lot of those either to self-service or virtual agent. And on the virtual agent side, you're able to get more, service more customers, if you will, per agent.

從歷史上看，我們主要是通過電話聯絡中心與客戶以及我們的供應合作夥伴進行對話。借助我們開發的技術，我們有能力將其中很多轉移到自助服務或虛擬代理。在虛擬代理方面，如果你願意的話，每個代理你可以獲得更多，服務更多的客戶。

And so both of those add leverage to the system. And we've really started the rollout into that. We've gotten good NPS scores and good returns, if you will, from doing that. And it's really a process of rolling that out, making sure that we have more and more use cases, we get it embedded into the right flows into the site, into the mobile apps as well.

因此，這兩者都增加了系統的影響力。我們真的已經開始推出了。如果您願意的話，我們已經獲得了良好的 NPS 分數和良好的回報。這真的是一個推廣的過程，確保我們有越來越多的用例，我們將它嵌入到正確的流程中，進入網站，也進入移動應用程序。

And I think that is likely the largest opportunity. And then credit card costs and variable cloud as well are meaningful, but I would say that those 2 are a distant second, if you will, after the conversation platform opportunity.

我認為這可能是最大的機會。然後信用卡成本和可變雲也很有意義，但我會說這兩個是遙遠的第二個，如果你願意的話，在對話平台機會之後。

Yes. And then I guess, Eric, you can follow on, and I'll do color commentary on that one.

是的。然後我想，埃里克，你可以繼續，我將對那個進行彩色評論。

Yes. On the volume side, like this recovery is going to be a series of many stories. And so if you take hotel, for instance, and I could say that, that's been flat for the last couple of months. But if you deaverage that number, what you actually end up seeing is that there are areas that are flat to declining and there are areas that are gradually improving.

是的。在數量方面，像這次復蘇將是一系列的故事。因此，如果您以酒店為例，我可以這麼說，過去幾個月一直持平。但如果你對這個數字進行去平均化，你最終會看到的是有些區域持平到下降，有些區域正在逐漸改善。

And so using a hotel as the example, Europe has been more challenged. Peter already mentioned that. And they've got even more challenged over the last week or 2 just given the increasing lockdowns that are reoccurring. Whereas the U.S. has a more steady increase over time on the hotel side. We will see what happens with the Wave 3 that's occurring right now and something that we're looking at very closely.

因此，以酒店為例，歐洲面臨的挑戰更大。彼得已經提到了這一點。鑑於不斷增加的封鎖，他們在過去一兩週內遇到了更大的挑戰。而隨著時間的推移，美國在酒店方面的增長更為穩定。我們將看到現在正在發生的第 3 波浪潮會發生什麼，以及我們正在密切關注的事情。

But as we say it's plateaued, it's actually many stories underneath. And I think we're going to see the same thing. We've got international versus domestic. And we wait in some regions of the world and one versus the other. And that's the series of many stories that will make up how we see overall the business is performing.

但正如我們所說的，它已經趨於穩定，實際上背後隱藏著許多故事。我認為我們會看到同樣的事情。我們有國際與國內。我們在世界的某些地區等待，一個地區與另一個地區相對。這就是許多故事的系列，它們將構成我們對整體業務表現的看法。

Yes. And the only color I'd add to that is our numbers also include bookings from B2B partners and people in other parts of the area. So it makes the many stories even more vast in terms of our exposure to different geographies or exposure to different types of business.

是的。我要添加的唯一顏色是我們的數字還包括來自 B2B 合作夥伴和該地區其他地區的人的預訂。因此，就我們接觸不同地區或接觸不同類型的業務而言，它使許多故事變得更加廣泛。

So I would say thinking of it as a whole is probably the simplest way, but all things being equal with the trend the way they are in the last 2 weeks, probably good news that we're weighted towards North America. But there have been times when it's been something else. And we wish we had more China business since domestic China is doing quite well relative to the rest of the world.

所以我想說把它作為一個整體來考慮可能是最簡單的方法，但所有事情都與過去兩週的趨勢相同，這可能是我們偏向北美的好消息。但也有過其他情況。我們希望我們有更多的中國業務，因為中國國內相對於世界其他地區做得很好。

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney from RBC.

你的下一個問題來自 RBC 的 Mark Mahaney。

Two questions, please. You mentioned market share, but in North America, do you see any evidence of material market share shifts amongst the different providers, Airbnb, Booking, Expedia?

請教兩個問題。你提到了市場份額，但在北美，你是否看到任何證據表明 Airbnb、Booking、Expedia 等不同供應商之間的市場份額發生重大變化？

Secondly, you mentioned those 3 areas of cost efficiency, the fixed, the variable, and then you talked about performance marketing. Can you just drill down a little bit more on performance marking? I know you've had some pretty bold robust plans for bringing performance marketing efficiencies. And then all of a sudden, we had COVID. Is it clear to you that you've got enough evidence that there are newfound efficiencies in performance marketing? It's still TBD to when we get real robust recovery in travel conditions. Just spend a little bit more time, please, on performance marketing efficiencies.

其次，你提到了成本效率的三個方面，即固定成本、可變成本，然後你談到了績效營銷。您能否更深入地了解性能標記？我知道您已經制定了一些非常大膽、穩健的計劃來提高績效營銷效率。然後突然之間，我們有了 COVID。您是否清楚，您有足夠的證據證明績效營銷有新的效率？當我們在旅行條件方面獲得真正強勁的複蘇時，它仍然是待定的。請多花一點時間在績效營銷效率上。

Peter, are you there? Did we lose you?

彼得，你在嗎？我們失去你了嗎？

Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yes. I'll jump in. I was saying I'll take the second one first, and then you can remind me the first one.

哦，對不起，對不起，對不起。是的。我會跳進去。我是說我會先拿第二個，然後你可以提醒我第一個。

I would say on the Performance marketing side, you are correct. We have talked historically about bringing more efficiency out of it, getting our return on marketing better, more precise, et cetera. The problem was I think that was to, to some extent, wishful thinking because we did not have all the data, all the tooling and all the approaches synchronized, if you will. We let brands compete. That has some dis-synergies that never were quantified, but certainly existed. We did not have the benefit of all the data because each brand had its own data and on and on and on.

我會說在績效營銷方面，你是對的。從歷史上看，我們一直在談論如何提高效率，讓我們的營銷回報更好、更精確等等。問題是，我認為這在某種程度上是一廂情願的想法，因為我們沒有同步所有的數據、所有的工具和所有的方法，如果你願意的話。我們讓品牌競爭。這有一些從未被量化但肯定存在的協同效應。我們沒有從所有數據中獲益，因為每個品牌都有自己的數據，而且還在不斷增加。

So I am positively optimistic that when we have all data flows right and we have all the algorithms rewritten for that and when we have the tooling right, there should be significant upside for us in actually bringing out that return that you've heard about over these many years. I think that is what is required. And it is real, and we will get to it. We have to do it obviously. We haven't done it yet.

因此，我非常樂觀地認為，當我們擁有正確的所有數據流並且我們為此重寫了所有算法並且當我們擁有正確的工具時，我們應該有顯著的優勢來實際帶來您已經聽說過的回報這麼多年。我認為這是必需的。這是真實的，我們會得到它。顯然我們必須這樣做。我們還沒有做到。

But to otherwise sort of mess around the idea of taking one brand higher or lower, doing this with a very blunt set of instruments, and I think candidly it was optimistic to think we could do a lot better. We certainly could have run more profit at the expense of share. That we certainly made some trades for share over a profit historically. And we certainly make trades like that in certain geos and for certain reasons over time.

但是，為了讓一個品牌更高或更低的想法變得有點混亂，用一套非常生硬的工具來做到這一點，我坦率地認為我們可以做得更好是樂觀的。我們當然可以以犧牲份額為代價獲得更多利潤。從歷史上看，我們當然進行了一些股票交易而不是利潤。隨著時間的推移，出於某些原因，我們當然會在某些地區進行這樣的交易。

But I think more broadly, the opportunity to just perform better is really unlocked by stringing all of those work together and really making it powerful. So I'm a total believer in it and I think it will happen. But we haven't done it yet, so we have to do it.

但我認為更廣泛地說，通過將所有這些工作串在一起並真正使其強大，才能真正釋放出表現更好的機會。所以我完全相信它，我認為它會發生。但是我們還沒有做到，所以我們必須這樣做。

And then sorry, Mark, your first question? I apologize.

然後抱歉，馬克，你的第一個問題？我道歉。

Yes. Do you think that there's clear signs of a market -- you brought up market share. Have there been any signs of market share shifts in North America?

是的。你認為有明顯的市場跡象嗎——你提高了市場份額。北美市場份額是否有任何變化的跡象？

Yes. I think, well, definitely, you've seen alternative get an outsized share relative to where it was. And we've been beneficiaries of some of that. Airbnb have been beneficiaries of some of that. So the more concentrated you are towards the things, the use cases that are working well, I think you're going to get share benefits.

是的。我想，嗯，當然，你已經看到替代品相對於它的位置獲得了巨大的份額。我們一直是其中一些的受益者。 Airbnb 是其中的一些受益者。因此，您越專注於事物，運作良好的用例，我認為您將獲得分享收益。

More broadly, I think share has moved around for a lot of little reasons, and you're dealing with low volumes. So I look at markets where we points move around. And then you look at the dollars related to it, and they're tiny. And you say, okay, it doesn't really matter. It could just be a bad weekend or good weekend.

更廣泛地說，我認為由於很多小原因，份額已經發生變化，而且你正在處理低銷量。所以我看看我們點移動的市場。然後你看看與之相關的美元，它們很小。然後你說，好吧，這並不重要。這可能只是一個糟糕的周末或美好的周末。

But I think nothing we're seeing portends to anything for the future for like a long-term effect. I don't think there is anything that suggests anyone's winning or losing in a way that will give them long-term benefit. I think for us with Vrbo, we believe it's really good for the brand and people are getting a lot of exposure to that use case. And people are seeing how nice that vacation can be. I don't think that means that people will never go back to hotels, but I think it helps us relative to Airbnb. So that's good for us.

但我認為我們所看到的一切都預示著未來的長期影響。我認為沒有任何跡象表明任何人的輸贏會給他們帶來長期利益。我認為對於我們 Vrbo，我們相信它對品牌真的有好處，而且人們越來越多地接觸到這個用例。人們看到這個假期有多美好。我不認為這意味著人們永遠不會回到酒店，但我認為相對於 Airbnb，這對我們有幫助。所以這對我們有好處。

And I think beyond that, we don't expect anything going on in any single geo or overall is really a long-term effect, which is partly why we're not overly exercised if we're not perfectly tuned as a machine on the performance marketing side because none of this is, with levels down 50, 60, whatever, plus percent in certain markets, it's hard to think that any of that is sustainable or meaningful for the long term. So that's been our approach.

而且我認為除此之外，我們不期望在任何單一地區或整體上發生的任何事情真的會產生長期影響，這就是為什麼如果我們沒有像機器一樣完美地調整我們就不會過度鍛煉的部分原因績效營銷方面，因為這一切都不是，在某些市場中水平下降了 50、60 等等，再加上百分比，很難認為其中任何一個是可持續的或長期有意義的。這就是我們的方法。

Next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan from UBS.

下一個問題來自瑞銀的 Eric Sheridan。

Maybe two, if I can, following up on some of the topics talked about so far. On Vrbo, with the success you're seeing in terms of the demand and the new customers that are coming into the platform, is there anything to call out in terms of your go-to-market strategy, your marketing strategy, that you might think portend for sort of longer term better returns on marketing spend or margin structure in Vrbo as a business?

也許兩個，如果可以的話，跟進到目前為止討論的一些主題。在 Vrbo 上，隨著您在需求和進入平台的新客戶方面所看到的成功，在您的上市策略、營銷策略方面有什麼值得一提的嗎？認為 Vrbo 作為一家企業在營銷支出或利潤率結構方面有更好的長期回報嗎？

And then on your brand strategy and sort of the realignment of the marketing platform, are you also at the same time thinking through whether you need to be in the same number of brands? What I'm saying, scope of brands on a multiyear view towards an eye of like managing a mix of sort of growth versus profitability?

然後在你的品牌戰略和營銷平台的重新調整上，你是否也在同時考慮是否需要在相同數量的品牌中？我的意思是，從多年的角度來看，品牌的範圍類似於管理增長與盈利能力的混合？

Sure. So let me do Vrbo first. Yes. Well, a few things.

當然。所以讓我先做Vrbo。是的。好吧，有幾件事。

One, there's a lot of work that's been going on over the last several months on Vrbo and its margins in terms of -- Eric mentioned or we've mentioned in the past. Bringing it on to our payments platform, that's been good for us, saves us money with a third-party provider, allowed us to use power of Expedia's payment platform, which itself is getting stronger every day and more efficient. So those kinds of benefits are there.

第一，過去幾個月在 Vrbo 及其利潤率方面進行了大量工作——埃里克提到或我們過去提到過。把它帶到我們的支付平台上，這對我們有好處，為我們節省了第三方供應商的錢，讓我們能夠使用 Expedia 支付平台的力量，它本身每天都在變得更強大、更高效。所以這些好處就在那裡。

There's work being done on the consumer process, on the fees and other things where we think we're under market. So I think we've had opportunity and we found opportunity to expand margins at Vrbo.

在消費者流程、費用和我們認為我們在市場上的其他事情上正在做一些工作。所以我認為我們有機會，我們找到了擴大 Vrbo 利潤率的機會。

But to your bigger question, we definitely think that we did not land the Vrbo rebranding as strongly as we wanted to, that there is opportunity now, given that so many people are using it and the use case is so attractive right now and that we are concentrated in whole home, which is like the most effective part of the alternative market right now, that we intend to and are already pushing into a much more aggressive plot to broadly push the brand. We've turned the brand over in a few more markets in Europe just a few weeks ago, and we will keep pushing. But yes, there's an opportunity there, and we think that is a place we want to be more bold even in a down market, and we will continue to be pushing into that.

但對於你更大的問題，我們絕對認為我們沒有像我們想要的那樣強烈地實現 Vrbo 品牌重塑，現在有機會，因為有這麼多人在使用它，而且這個用例現在非常有吸引力，我們集中在整個家庭，這就像目前替代市場中最有效的部分，我們打算並且已經在推動更積極的計劃以廣泛推廣品牌。就在幾週前，我們已經在歐洲的更多市場上推出了該品牌，我們將繼續努力。但是，是的，那裡有機會，我們認為即使在市場低迷的情況下，我們也希望在這個領域更加大膽，我們將繼續推進這一領域。

To your second question about how many brands we have, yes, we have a lot. We certainly won't keep any that we don't think makes sense. But right now, we think the number of brands creates opportunity as long as we have segmented them and thought about them geographically, et cetera, to their greatest effect. So my big push has been if we have a brand frankly that maybe none of you have heard of, like Wotif in Australia, that is our strongest brand for the moment in Australia, then we need to concentrate on building that brand and not worry about whether it's Expedia or Hotels.com or anything else. Likewise, Vrbo has a different brand, a different company that acquired in Australia that we're not going to change that brand because it's a strong local brand and we should push into it.

關於你的第二個問題，我們有多少個品牌，是的，我們有很多。我們當然不會保留任何我們認為沒有意義的東西。但現在，我們認為品牌的數量創造了機會，只要我們對它們進行細分並在地理上考慮它們，等等，以發揮它們的最大作用。所以我的主要推動力是，如果我們有一個品牌，坦率地說，也許你們都沒有聽說過，比如澳大利亞的 Wotif，這是我們目前在澳大利亞最強大的品牌，那麼我們需要集中精力打造這個品牌，而不用擔心無論是 Expedia 還是 Hotels.com 或其他任何網站。同樣，Vrbo 有一個不同的品牌，一家在澳大利亞收購的不同公司，我們不會改變那個品牌，因為它是一個強大的本地品牌，我們應該推動它。

We have historically had this record of, okay, we have existing brand or we buy brand. We're also going to push Expedia into that market. We're also going to push Hotels. And that kind of, I would say, took away the value of multi-brand because it didn't allow us to optimize for each one.

我們歷史上有這樣的記錄，好的，我們有現有品牌或我們購買品牌。我們還將推動 Expedia 進入該市場。我們還將推出酒店。我想說的是，這種做法剝奪了多品牌的價值，因為它不允許我們針對每個品牌進行優化。

So that's why we're doing the segmentation work. That's why we're trying to figure out what the proposition is for each brand. Some brands, admittedly, we have historically run for more profit, whereas obviously we have pushed -- we are looking at the whole kind of plate of options and driving the best result by country, by brand that we can. And that may mean we close some brands in some countries. That may mean potentially some brands will stop. But we have no intention right now to do that, but we are looking at the whole thing and trying to optimize for it all. But we think, in general, having more gives us the opportunity to do more if we do it smartly.

這就是我們進行細分工作的原因。這就是為什麼我們試圖弄清楚每個品牌的主張是什麼。誠然，一些品牌，我們歷來追求更多利潤，而顯然我們已經推動 - 我們正在研究各種選擇，並按國家和品牌推動最佳結果。這可能意味著我們會關閉某些國家/地區的某些品牌。這可能意味著一些品牌可能會停止。但我們現在無意這樣做，但我們正在研究整個事情並嘗試對其進行優化。但我們認為，總的來說，如果我們做得聰明，擁有更多的東西會讓我們有機會做更多的事情。

Your next question comes from the line of Deepak Mathivanan from Barclays.

你的下一個問題來自巴克萊銀行的 Deepak Mathivanan。

Just a couple of ones on Vrbo. So first, can you talk about where you are currently in terms of in a merchandising Vrbo's augmented accommodations inventory on Expedia and Hotels.com? Is that something that you're seeing benefits from currently? Is like this is a perfect time to kind of channel logo inventory at a higher level into your other strong brands since consumers are looking for that type of inventory?

Vrbo 上只有幾個。那麼首先，你能談談你目前在 Expedia 和 Hotels.com 上的營銷 Vrbo 增強住宿庫存方面的位置嗎？這是你目前看到的好處嗎？既然消費者正在尋找這種類型的庫存，那麼現在是否是將更高級別的渠道標識庫存引入您的其他強勢品牌的最佳時機？

And then second question related to it, how you feel about the inventory levels on Vrbo, particularly given the strong demand that's there for alternative accommodations? Are there any markets where there is inventory pressure on Vrbo at this time?

然後是與之相關的第二個問題，您對 Vrbo 的庫存水平有何看法，特別是考慮到對替代住宿的強烈需求？有哪些市場此時對Vrbo有庫存壓力？

Sure. So a couple of things there. I would say on the latter part, no. We've seen some pressure over the summer, a little bit in a few markets, but we haven't generally seen literally no inventory. There's a few spots. But in summer, recall, was everybody heading headlong into the only alternative they were comfortable doing. So there was a really acute demand spike there.

當然。所以有幾件事。我會在後半部分說，不。我們在夏季看到了一些壓力，在一些市場有一點點，但我們一般沒有看到真正沒有庫存。有幾個地方。但在夏天，回想起來，每個人都一頭扎進他們唯一願意做的選擇。所以那裡的需求真的很猛烈。

We do think there's more opportunity to serve whole home opportunity. And I think we will continue to try to grow our inventory. The question is, and obviously anywhere we see demand, we will want to drive inventory. The question longer term is, we have historically had deficit in pricing studies and those kinds of use cases, and that is a bigger strategic question for us. It's a place where Airbnb obviously has made great hay, although it hasn't helped them during COVID. Likewise Bookings has done a nice job with city-based inventory, and to your point, a more integrated experience.

我們確實認為有更多機會為整個家庭服務。我認為我們將繼續努力增加庫存。問題是，顯然在我們看到需求的任何地方，我們都希望增加庫存。長期的問題是，我們歷來在定價研究和此類用例方面存在缺陷，這對我們來說是一個更大的戰略問題。顯然，Airbnb 在這里大賺了一筆，儘管它在 COVID 期間沒有幫助他們。同樣，Bookings 在基於城市的庫存方面做得很好，就您而言，這是一種更加綜合的體驗。

And so sort of moving on to that question, the product is not great when it comes to surfacing vacation rental opportunities or alternative foundations through our main OTA brands. We've been slow to get there and it's not where we want it to be. It's definitely an opportunity, but we have found that there is a little bit of a conflict from the standpoint of, people don't generally go to our OTA brands for alternative accommodations. It's not what they think of. So even though it's there and present, it hasn't performed perhaps the way you or I might think it would.

所以有點轉向這個問題，當涉及到通過我們的主要 OTA 品牌提供度假租賃機會或替代基礎時，該產品並不是很好。我們到達那裡的速度很慢，這不是我們想要的地方。這絕對是一個機會，但我們發現從人們通常不會去我們的 OTA 品牌尋找替代住宿的角度來看存在一點衝突。這不是他們的想法。因此，儘管它存在並存在，但它的表現可能並不像您或我想像的那樣。

So I think we've got a combination of work we need to do on that front, which is we can definitely make significant improvement in the product and how the content will surface, how people see alternative accommodations and where they see it and et cetera, but also we need to lean into it. And we need to market particular places where our big OTAs have good reach and brand recognition and Vrbo does not. It may well be more sensible for us to lean into -- get a vacation home on Expedia as opposed to trying to introduce the Vrbo brand.

所以我認為我們在這方面需要做很多工作，我們絕對可以在產品和內容的呈現方式、人們如何看待替代住宿以及他們在哪裡看到等等方面做出重大改進，但我們也需要深入其中。我們需要在我們的大型 OTA 具有良好影響力和品牌知名度而 Vrbo 沒有的特定地點進行營銷。我們可能更明智地選擇——在 Expedia 上獲得度假屋，而不是嘗試引入 Vrbo 品牌。

So we are looking at all that. I would say dual work streams where we're trying to materially improve the product experience with alternative accommodations on the main OTAs, and then how do we market that and how do we test to push that into those markets.

所以我們正在研究所有這些。我會說雙重工作流，我們試圖通過主要 OTA 上的替代住宿來實質性地改善產品體驗，然後我們如何營銷它以及我們如何測試將其推向這些市場。

And I'll say that seems like that would be job one, and we'd be all after it because of the appeal of alternative right now. You have to keep in mind that we are rearchitecting literally our entire technical infrastructure and platform. And some of these things have to sort of get prioritized. And it's in the works, but it's not the only thing we're working on.

我會說這似乎是第一項工作，而且由於現在替代方案的吸引力，我們都會全力以赴。您必須記住，我們實際上是在重新構建我們的整個技術基礎架構和平台。其中一些事情必須優先考慮。它正在進行中，但這不是我們正在做的唯一事情。

Your next question comes from the line of Justin Post from Bank of America.

你的下一個問題來自美國銀行的 Justin Post。

My first question on hotel supply, are you seeing any inroads there or good deals on Expedia that you might otherwise get any reason for consumers to come directly to Expedia versus other sites?

關於酒店供應，我的第一個問題是，您是否看到 Expedia 有任何進展或優惠交易，否則您可能有任何理由讓消費者直接訪問 Expedia 而不是其他網站？

And then secondly, thanks for the Vrbo update. I know you said it grew in 3Q. I'm assuming that's bookings and revenues. Can you give us a year-to-date update on Vrbo?

其次，感謝 Vrbo 更新。我知道你說它在第三季度增長。我假設這是預訂量和收入。你能給我們介紹一下 Vrbo 的最新進展嗎？

Eric, you want to start to answer the second one, I'm not sure we can.

Eric，你想開始回答第二個問題，我不確定我們是否可以。

I don't think -- we've not shared or disclosed on the Vrbo. The year, I would say, we are healthily up for the year. We clearly had the spike in June just given the summer compression where people felt comfortable traveling. We [were] (corrected by company after the call) up year-on-year in Q3, let's call it, at more reasonable levels than June. But both revenue and gross bookings were up year-on-year, and I think you can extrapolate back to the start of the year as well.

我不認為——我們沒有在 Vrbo 上分享或披露。這一年，我想說，我們健康地度過了這一年。考慮到人們在夏季旅行時感覺舒適的夏季壓縮，我們顯然在 6 月出現了峰值。我們 [were]（在電話會議後由公司更正）在第三季度同比增長，我們稱之為比 6 月份更合理的水平。但收入和總預訂量都同比增長，我認為你也可以推斷到年初。

Got it. And then on hotel supply?

知道了。然後是酒店供應？

Yes. On the hotel supply side, we have obviously among the most competitive hotel supply in the world. There's not a lot of discounting that is unique to them. The hotels are discounting, but I don't think there discounting is unique to us. And I think what we provide, what Expedia provides obviously beyond just very good value, is a bunch of ways to find what you want, a bunch of ways to book multi-product, a way to do everything in one place. So there are a lot of offerings with Hotels.com Hotels.com, you get very robust rewards. So there's other offerings that are differentiating for us on the brand side, including where we're trying to go with a product to get a much better personalization, helping make good value choices, et cetera, so.

是的。在酒店供應方面，我們顯然擁有世界上最具競爭力的酒店供應。沒有很多折扣是他們獨有的。酒店打折，但我不認為打折是我們獨有的。而且我認為我們提供的，Expedia 提供的顯然不僅僅是非常好的價值，是一系列找到你想要的東西的方法，一系列預訂多產品的方法，一種在一個地方做所有事情的方法。因此，Hotels.com Hotels.com 提供了很多產品，您可以獲得非常豐厚的回報。因此，在品牌方面，還有其他產品讓我們與眾不同，包括我們試圖通過產品獲得更好的個性化，幫助做出好的價值選擇等等。

I would say that is where we have to push our business, the differentiated hotel supply, even when we can get it is usually not sustainable. It's not like something that's consistent, but we do want our hotels to be in a better position to optimize our platform. So we are doing an inverse, which is trying to give them better data so that they can be much more effective at pricing and moving into where they want to move on our platform. So if that's suites or certain kinds of rooms or whatever, we want to be giving them inbound information, so they can understand the market, understand where there's opportunity to price up or down to gain both rooms, et cetera.

我想說的是，這是我們必須推動業務發展的地方，差異化的酒店供應，即使我們可以獲得它通常也是不可持續的。這不像是一致的東西，但我們確實希望我們的酒店能夠更好地優化我們的平台。因此，我們正在做相反的事情，試圖為他們提供更好的數據，以便他們可以更有效地定價並進入他們想在我們平台上移動的位置。因此，如果那是套房或某些類型的房間或其他任何東西，我們希望向他們提供入站信息，以便他們了解市場，了解哪裡有機會提高或降低價格以獲得兩個房間，等等。

So that's where we're pushing, and we think that's going to make us a much more valuable partner for the suppliers. But I don't think it's going to be about if you get a $5 better deal than the next person. I think it's really going to be about how you can help them build their business.

所以這就是我們正在推動的地方，我們認為這將使我們成為供應商更有價值的合作夥伴。但我認為，如果你比下一個人多賺 5 美元，那將不會發生什麼。我認為這真的是關於如何幫助他們建立業務。

Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Kopelman from Cowen.

我們的下一個問題來自 Cowen 的 Kevin Kopelman。

I just have a quick follow-up on Vrbo. If you could comment on the seasonality patterns there that you're seeing into Q4 and the current environment, are you seeing any change there, any kind of continued shift into Vrbo even as we get outside of what is typically the peak season?

我只是對 Vrbo 進行了快速跟進。如果你能評論你在第四季度和當前環境中看到的季節性模式，你是否看到那裡有任何變化，即使我們已經超出了通常的旺季，是否會繼續轉向 Vrbo？

Yes.

是的。

Sorry, go ahead.

對不起，繼續。

No, no, no.

不不不。

Thanks for the question. Vrbo is I mentioned earlier, it is much more seasonal than the rest of our business. So it's concentrated in the summer months, even more so than North America given summer. So we would naturally expect to see it come down into Q3 and into Q4, and that is what we're seeing. It continues to be at healthy rates and continues to be a product that I think consumers, in the environment that we're in, in particular, find compelling to be able to continue to travel. So you can think about the normal travel seasonality of looking in the early part of the year to stay in the middle part of the year and then less activity in the latter part of the year just magnified in Vrbo relative to the rest of travel.

謝謝你的問題。 Vrbo 是我之前提到的，它比我們其他業務更具季節性。所以它集中在夏季，甚至比北美的夏季還要多。所以我們自然希望看到它進入第三季度和第四季度，這就是我們所看到的。它繼續保持健康的速度，並且繼續成為我認為消費者，尤其是在我們所處的環境中，能夠繼續旅行的產品。因此，您可以考慮正常的旅行季節性，即在年初尋找年中，然後在今年下半年減少活動，只是在 Vrbo 相對於其他旅行有所放大。

Right. And then -- go ahead.

正確的。然後——繼續。

No. I was just going to add that, that is an area we believe there's opportunity. And a lot of the advertising and marketing we've been doing with Vrbo have to do with sort of staycations, if you will, in North America where kids may not be going to school, people may not be going to work. Sort of take your life somewhere else, and we think there is opportunity to break some patterns while this going on, but that is just a COVID-centric issue.

不，我只是想補充一點，我們認為這是一個有機會的領域。我們與 Vrbo 一起做的很多廣告和營銷都與住宿有關，如果你願意的話，在北美，孩子們可能不會上學，人們可能不會去工作。有點把你的生活帶到別處，我們認為在這種情況下有機會打破一些模式，但這只是一個以 COVID 為中心的問題。

Got it. And then longer term I think on a like-for-like basis, Vrbo's take rate has been a little bit lower than traditionally you would get with hotel. How do you see that playing out longer term in terms of revenue take rate?

知道了。然後從長遠來看，我認為在類似的基礎上，Vrbo 的入住率比傳統的酒店低一點。您如何看待收入採用率方面的長期影響？

Yes. I'm happy to take that one. Thanks for the question again. There is a gap between us and Airbnb in particular. And it's something that we do feel that it gives us a bit of an advantage with consumers, but it is something that we are looking at. This is something that we test. We do think there are opportunities to increase monetization over time. But I would say there continues to be a gap. We are actively looking at that. We are actively testing it. And I do think that there is upside in our monetization over time.

是的。我很高興接受那個。再次感謝您的提問。特別是我們和 Airbnb 之間存在差距。我們確實認為它給我們帶來了一些消費者優勢，但這是我們正在關注的事情。這是我們測試的東西。我們確實認為隨著時間的推移有機會增加貨幣化。但我要說的是，仍然存在差距。我們正在積極研究。我們正在積極測試它。而且我確實認為隨著時間的推移我們的貨幣化有上升空間。

Next question comes from the line of Jed Kelly from Oppenheimer.

下一個問題來自奧本海默的傑德凱利。

Thanks. Just on Vrbo just circling back, I mean can you talk about the supply into the winter travel season? It seems like that's going to be premium supply, and how you think you're there.

謝謝。就在 Vrbo 上，我的意思是你能談談冬季旅遊旺季的供應情況嗎？看起來這將是優質供應，以及你認為你在那裡的方式。

And then just a follow-up on virtual agent, I mean, what's your confidence level in virtual agent as travel volumes start to normalize? Like is that just around handling normalized volumes?

然後只是對虛擬代理的跟進，我的意思是，隨著旅行量開始正常化，您對虛擬代理的信心程度如何？就像處理規範化卷一樣？

Yes. So just on the Vrbo supply, I think we are well equipped and well put. We think we have lots of good value, high value inventory show up in lots of places people want to go in the winter, be that for Thanksgiving, Christmas, et cetera. And we think there's an opportunity that those trips will be longer in duration than they typically are given school holidays, et cetera, around the U.S. in particular. But we don't feel like we're deficient on the inventory side. That does not mean we don't have opportunity, and it doesn't mean we have parity everywhere on everything. But we think we have plenty of inventory to power a very robust winter season if the demand is there. So we're not worried about that. And sorry, the second part was...

是的。因此，就 Vrbo 供應而言，我認為我們裝備精良，佈置得當。我們認為我們有很多物有所值、高價值的庫存出現在人們冬天想去的很多地方，比如感恩節、聖誕節等。而且我們認為，這些旅行的持續時間有可能會比學校假期等通常更長，尤其是在美國各地。但我們不覺得我們在庫存方面存在缺陷。這並不意味著我們沒有機會，也不意味著我們在所有事情上都處處平等。但我們認為，如果有需求，我們有足夠的庫存來為非常強勁的冬季提供動力。所以我們對此並不擔心。抱歉，第二部分是……

Confidence around virtual agent.

對虛擬代理的信心。

Yes. The confidence in the virtual agent. So I would say to you a couple of things. One, despite the fact that our volumes are down, given COVID, given cancellation rates, given all the issues that travelers have, I wouldn't necessarily assume that our servicing volume is proportionally down because there's been a lot of traveler issues going on in the world that have created huge relative spikes in traffic. So we've been testing the conversation platform into all kinds of use cases. And we will ultimately have it in virtually everything we do, including our dealings with supply partners and other things. So it is being rolled out broadly.

是的。對虛擬代理的信心。所以我想對你說幾件事。第一，儘管考慮到 COVID、考慮到取消率、考慮到旅客遇到的所有問題，儘管我們的服務量有所下降，但我不一定認為我們的服務量會按比例下降，因為創造了巨大的相對流量峰值的世界。因此，我們一直在將對話平台測試到各種用例中。我們最終幾乎會在我們所做的每一件事中使用它，包括我們與供應合作夥伴的交易和其他事情。因此，它正在廣泛推廣。

As Eric said, the NPS scores have been strong on it. People generally like to deal with a machine if they can and just get it over with and not have to talk to a person. It's not true universally, but that seems to be true for most people. And we feel very good about it. So it's scaling up. It's a platform tool. It's the kind of tool we want to have in our company, across the company, that we have a platform technology that needs to be taught and taught different use cases and applied consistently. So we have high confidence in its ability to continue to roll out and handle as much traffic as comes in. So no issues there.

正如埃里克所說，它的 NPS 得分很高。如果可以的話，人們通常喜歡和機器打交道，然後就把它搞定，而不必與人交談。這不是普遍適用的，但對大多數人來說似乎是正確的。我們對此感覺很好。所以它正在擴大規模。它是一個平台工具。這是我們希望在整個公司擁有的一種工具，我們擁有一種平台技術，需要教授和教授不同的用例並始終如一地應用。因此，我們對其繼續推出和處理盡可能多的流量的能力充滿信心。所以沒有問題。

We will now take our final question, Lee Horowitz from Evercore ISI.

我們現在將提出最後一個問題，來自 Evercore ISI 的 Lee Horowitz。

Just one if I could. Peter, you had mentioned some of your North American suppliers seeing greater direct bookings perhaps as people shop less. I'm wondering if you would comment at all on your mix of direct bookings in the quarter, how that may be trending, what you're seeing through this crisis and perhaps your view on how sustainable those trends may be beyond COVID?

如果可以的話就一個。 Peter，您曾提到您的一些北美供應商看到直接預訂量增加可能是因為人們購物減少了。我想知道您是否會對本季度的直接預訂組合發表評論，這可能是趨勢，您在這場危機中看到了什麼，也許您對這些趨勢在 COVID 之外的可持續性有多大看法？

Yes, surely. I would say that what we've seen is, mix-wise, we've mixed towards a lot more direct traffic. App bookings are up considerably. Direct is up considerably. But I would caution anyone from taking too much from that because we have been less aggressive in the performance market.

是的，當然。我想說的是，我們所看到的是，在混合方面，我們已經混合了更多的直接流量。應用程序預訂量大幅增加。直接大幅上漲。但我會提醒任何人不要從中獲取太多，因為我們在性能市場上不那麼激進。

So it's a little bit of self-blending, if you will, down to a mix that is more free, which, of course, has helped all our margins and helped us post the numbers we posted last quarter. But that is inherently in part because we have taken our foot off the gas in certain areas in terms of performance marketing and unprofitable performance marketing.

因此，如果你願意的話，這是一種自我混合，直到一種更自由的混合，這當然有助於我們所有的利潤，並幫助我們公佈了上個季度公佈的數字。但這本質上部分是因為我們在績效營銷和無利可圖的績效營銷方面已經在某些領域採取了措施。

So I think again as we blend back into normalcy, assuming we will be more proficient and have these tools we've discussed about on the performance marketing side, et cetera, my sincere hope is we can grow more share through those performance channels at attractive levels and attractive profitability. And I believe that will happen. And if that's true, of course, we'll mix our way back to a more historical balance.

所以我再次思考，當我們回歸常態時，假設我們會更加熟練，並且擁有我們在績效營銷方面討論過的這些工具，等等，我真誠地希望我們能夠通過這些績效渠道以有吸引力的方式增加更多份額水平和有吸引力的盈利能力。我相信那會發生。如果那是真的，當然，我們將混合我們的方式回到更具歷史意義的平衡。

But the trends have been very good. It's a credit to our brand loyalty or brands loyalty, I guess. And app has been very strong. And of course, we are putting lots of energy into improving the products for all those things and making them stickier because while it has gratefully not been a topic today, we do want to have more direct traffic, avoid the performance marketing pools as much as we can and create recurring business. So that remains a core goal for us.

但是趨勢非常好。我想這是我們品牌忠誠度或品牌忠誠度的功勞。而且應用程序一直非常強大。當然，我們正在投入大量精力來改進所有這些東西的產品並使它們更具粘性，因為雖然今天這不是一個話題，但我們確實希望有更多的直接流量，盡可能避免績效營銷池我們可以並創造經常性業務。所以這仍然是我們的核心目標。

Hey, Peter, before we end, I just wanted to clean up one quick comment I made earlier just on Vrbo on the year-to-date. Year-to-date, we have seen declines due to the impact earlier this year on COVID. But Q3 was up year-on-year, and we were growing early in the year before COVID. So just wanted to clean up the fact that in the early days, if you will, of COVID that if you aggregate them for the year, it is down relatively, but was up before and up during. I just wanted to clean that up.

嘿，彼得，在我們結束之前，我只想整理一下我早些時候在 Vrbo 上發表的今年迄今為止的快速評論。今年迄今為止，由於今年早些時候對 COVID 的影響，我們看到了下降。但第三季度同比增長，我們在 COVID 之前的一年早些時候就開始增長。所以只是想澄清一個事實，如果你願意的話，在 COVID 的早期，如果你將它們匯總為一年，它相對下降，但之前是上升的，期間是上升的。我只是想清理一下。

Good. Thank you.

好的。謝謝。

I will now turn the call back over to Peter Kern.

我現在將把電話轉回給 Peter Kern。

Great. Well, thank you, everybody. Appreciate the questions. Hopefully, it helped give you some clarity.

偉大的。嗯，謝謝大家。感謝這些問題。希望它能幫助您理清思路。

Again, we're keenly focused internally still on everything we talked about. And I suspect our next call will sound a lot like that. And hopefully, the world's health will get better, and that will help our business along the way.

同樣，我們在內部仍然非常關注我們所談論的一切。我懷疑我們的下一次通話聽起來很像那樣。希望世界的健康狀況會變得更好，這將有助於我們的業務發展。

But appreciate the time. Thanks again to our people and appreciate you listening and the questions today. So take care. Bye.

但珍惜時間。再次感謝我們的員工，感謝您今天的聆聽和提問。所以保重。再見。

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

今天的電話會議到此結束。您現在可以斷開連接。