Expedia is opening an office in Seattle this summer to help the travel giant prepare for its headquarters relocation in 2019.
The company announced today that it inked a 3-year lease for 38,000 square feet of space at 645 Elliott, which is just a stone’s throw away from where Expedia will open its new headquarters in 2019. There will be room for up to 300 employees.
Currently based in Bellevue, Expedia said the new office — the company’s first in Seattle — is part of its “Test & Learn” strategy to prepare for the HQ relocation three years from now.
“We’re a test and learn culture at our very core,” Expedia Head of Communications Sarah Gavin said in a statement. “Just like we run thousands of tests across our product, engineering and marketing teams every year, we apply the same test and learn philosophy to our relocation efforts to understand how our employees and our broader community will experience our new headquarters. Leasing office space in Seattle is an example of just one of these tests that we’re running prior to our move to Seattle in 2019.”
This past April, Expedia announced that it was relocating from Bellevue to Seattle at the old Amgen campus along the Seattle waterfront. The company will be adding additional space to accommodate as many as 1,500 more employees, beyond its existing 3,000 in the region.
About 75 percent of the company’s employee in the region live on the Eastside and 25 percent on the Seattle side, Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said last year. It’s unclear if Expedia will keep the office at 645 Elliot once the HQ relocation is completed.
The most recent quarter was a busy one for Expedia. The company completed its $3.9 billion acquisition of HomeAway in December, challenging rising competitor Airbnb in the sharing economy travel industry. It also continued to adjust after its $1.6 billion acquisition of Orbitz, cutting staff in November.
Expedia posted $1.7 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2015, up 29 percent from the year-ago quarter, but missed analyst expectations for earnings.
