Booking Holdings, Expedia Group and Airbnb all ramped up their marketing spending in the second quarter of this year as the only travel giants tried to capture attention and bookings from consumers eager to travel during the spring and summer seasons.

But while overall marketing spending (reported by Airbnb and Expedia Group as both sales and marketing) is up for all three online travel companies, they all saw a decrease in the expense as a percentage of revenue – a key indicator they tout to analysts.

Airbnb saw the most notable improvement in this metric, with sales and marketing expenses of $380 million in Q2 this year coming in at just 18% of revenue ($2.1 billion). That’s compared to the second quarter of last year when sales and marketing costs were 24% of revenue.

The company says growth in revenue outpaced the increase in sales and marketing expenses “as a result of the significant increase in Nights and Experiences booked combined with higher ADRs and cost-saving initiatives.”

In a call discussing the results with analysts, Airbnb CFO David Stephenson noted: “One of the big strengths of Airbnb is our ability to market to both guests and hosts at the same time, to be able to bring guests with 90% of our traffic remaining direct or unpaid. And I think this brand strategy, in fact, it's more of a product marketing strategy that we have, to market the features and capabilities that we have at Airbnb and what makes us different has been a huge strength for us.”

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