A ‘new way of marketing’: Inside Expedia’s partnership with IShowSpeed

Travel marketing is full of aspirational content. A beautiful destination. A happy family. A picture-perfect sunset somewhere in the background. It looks so serene, so relaxing. How could you not want to go there?

That’s not the kind of marketing that Expedia is doing with creator IShowSpeed.

On Wednesday, the company kicked off a yearlong partnership with the creator, who has some 150 million followers across social platforms, with a nearly 12-hour livestream of his breakneck travels to four Caribbean locales—Dominica, Guadeloupe, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Maarten.

The stream shows a version of travel that is both unbelievable and relatable. The unreal: the average person is not going to be sponsored by a brand to hit four destinations in half a day and be inundated with fans in each locale. As for the real? All you want to do after traveling somewhere is find a good meal.

IShowSpeed, aka Darren Watkins Jr., creates content based on his travels, and he recently made headlines for his 28-day tour of 20 countries throughout Africa. But before this deal, he had not yet worked with a travel brand, according to Lauri Metrose, SVP of global communications at Expedia.

“This was really about connecting culture with our brand in a really authentic way and telling stories,” Metrose said of the partnership, adding that Watkins’s “extreme curiosity” in “learning about different cultures and learning about different people” was compelling.

“It was really important for us to do a partnership and not a one-off deal, not a brand deal,” she said. “This is really about storytelling and exploring the world and then allowing people to book the trips that [he] has gone on.”

More than a logo: The partnership has been in the works for six months, according to Metrose, who compared the in-depth planning process for the partnership to that of television. (She previously worked at CBS Studios.) The focus of multiple meetings over that time period was to ensure an authentic, genuine fit.

“For him, he didn’t want to slap a logo on stuff, and nor did we,” she said. “We built this together.”

Metrose declined to share how much the brand is spending on the partnership but noted that it’s one of the company’s “big bets” and “big partnerships for the year.” During the company’s 2025 fourth-quarter earnings call in February, Expedia Group CEO Ariane Gorin said the company was focused on “sharpen[ing] our brand value propositions with stronger creative, [which] makes our spend more effective.”

While the teams for Expedia and IShowSpeed worked to plan out how the first stream would go, the uncertain nature of a livestream was baked into the process.

“We didn’t put any restrictions saying, ‘Don’t say this. You can’t do this. You can’t do that.’ We know who he is. We came into this partnership eyes wide open,” she said.

Watkins has some experience with brands under his belt. He worked with Meta for a Super Bowl spot promoting Ray-Ban smart glasses and has also worked with brands including Beats by Dre, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Prime, and Doritos.

Clippable: As part of Expedia’s “social-first” ethos, the company had a “war room of people clipping in real time” on Wednesday to get content from the partnership across social channels, per Metrose.

In doing so, Expedia joins the ranks of marketers working with clippers to transform livestream content into short-form clips that can be distributed across social platforms. The strategy is a reflection of how people watch content today and is one that more brands seem poised to adopt this year.

Influencer focus: Overall, Expedia is planning to boost its efforts in influencer marketing this year, including expanding its program globally.

“We are investing more in influencer marketing,” Metrose said. “For us, this is the new way of marketing. This is how people are consuming their information. This is the most authentic way to engage.”