Expedia ousts CTO for policy violations
Rathi Murthy fired due to “a violation of company policy,” just days after the online travel firm’s annual product and partner conference
The surprise move comes just days after Murthy presented at the main stage at Expedia’s annual conference with its business partners in Las Vegas, where she announced the launch of the company’s AI travel assistant.
Key takeaways
- “Due to confidentiality, we will not be making any further comments on the matter,” Expedia said in the statement;
- During Murthy’s time at Expedia, the company underwent a multiyear, resource-intensive back-end update, which served to unify Expedia’s two other main brands, vacation rental site Vrbo and Hotels.com, onto a single technical platform;
- But the technical updates have slowed its vacation rental business in particular and haven’t yet brought the anticipated recovery in overall growth, at a time when the travel industry are grappling with uneven demand.
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