Expedia's 'Maracuyá' campaign, created by Anomaly LA in 2022, uses passion fruit as a cultural metaphor to reach Latino travelers across the United States with
Expedia Speaks to Latino Travelers Through the Language of Passion Fruit
Expedia's 'Maracuyá (Passion Fruit)' is a thirty-second bilingual travel campaign film, created by Anomaly LA and released in the United States in September 2022, that uses the passion fruit as a cultural metaphor to connect Latino travelers with the emotional and practical benefits of booking through Expedia.
Expedia unveiled the spot as part of its broader 'Glimpses' campaign platform, which launched in May 2022 and represented the brand's largest-ever marketing effort directed at U.S. Latino travelers, according to expedia.com. The film features a montage of travel moments — each anchored by the presence of the passion fruit, a fruit known by different names across Latin American communities: maracuyá, parchita, fruta de la pasión. That linguistic plurality is not incidental. It is the strategic spine of the work, acknowledging the geographic and cultural breadth of the Latino diaspora in the United States rather than flattening it into a single identity.
Mexican actress, producer, and narrator Salma Hayek Pinault provides the voiceover, guiding viewers through these travel vignettes while reminding them that Expedia members can save up to 30% when bundling a hotel with a flight, as reported by expedia.com. The spot was made available in both Spanish and English, a deliberate production choice that mirrors the bilingual reality of many Latino households across the US market. The campaign sits within Expedia's 'Made to Travel' umbrella, which also included a companion film titled 'Casa,' also produced by Anomaly LA. Together, the two films form the creative centrepiece of what Expedia described, according to Forbes, as its most ambitious multicultural marketing initiative to date. Clapboard rates 'Maracuyá' at 63 out of 100.
Expedia identified an under-served and commercially significant audience in U.S. Latino travelers. The strategic decision to build an entire campaign platform around cultural resonance rather than discount-first messaging reflects a meaningful shift in how the brand approached this segment in 2022. Rather than leading with transactional incentives, 'Maracuyá' earns attention through shared cultural experience before it delivers the product message.
The online travel booking market was expanding rapidly during this period. According to Grand View Research, the global online travel booking market was estimated at approximately US$485.1 billion in 2022, with projected compound annual growth of around 12.6% through 2032. In the United States, competition among online travel agencies was intensifying, with Booking Holdings — the parent company of Booking.com and Kayak — holding an estimated 25 to 35% share of major-OTA online bookings globally, according to research compiled by Skift Research. Expedia, as one of Booking Holdings' principal rivals, faced sustained pressure to differentiate on dimensions beyond price, particularly within high-growth audience segments.
Choosing the passion fruit as a narrative device was a culturally specific move that competitors such as Booking.com had not made in the U.S. Latino segment at this scale. The fruit's multiple regional names — maracuyá in much of South America, parchita in Venezuela, fruta de la pasión in parts of Central America — gave the creative team a ready-made metaphor for the diversity within Latino identity, as noted in coverage by Adweek on September 14, 2022. Anomaly LA's insight was that travel itself functions the same way: the same journey carries different meanings depending on where you are from. That alignment between product truth and cultural truth gave the campaign an authenticity that purely promotional messaging could not replicate.
Salma Hayek Pinault served as narrator, on-screen presence, and producer for the 'Maracuyá' campaign, according to expedia.com. Her involvement went beyond a celebrity endorsement. Hayek Pinault, a Mexican actress who has lived across multiple countries, brought personal authority to the campaign's central argument: that travel keeps people connected to their roots while opening them to other cultures.
In her own words, as quoted by expedia.com: 'As a Mexican who has lived in different parts of the world, traveling has allowed me to stay connected to my roots, my family and proudly bring my culture everywhere I go. It also has given me the privilege to discover other countries, celebrate our differences and our affinities.' That statement functions as an unscripted brief — it describes exactly what the film attempts to show. The creative team at Anomaly LA structured the thirty-second spot as a montage, cycling through travel moments in which the passion fruit appears as a recurring visual motif: ordered at a café, shared between family members, spotted at a market. Each appearance reinforces the idea that familiar things can travel too, and that cultural identity is portable.
The decision to produce the film in both Spanish and English was not a simple localisation exercise. It was a creative commitment to reflecting the bilingual experience of Latino communities in the United States, where language choice is itself an act of identity. Adsoftheworld.com documented the campaign as a film medium asset, noting its dual-language availability. Production credits beyond Hayek Pinault's roles as narrator and producer are not publicly documented in available sources. The film's visual grammar — warm colour grading, intimate framing, food as cultural anchor — drew praise from Adweek, which published a positive review on September 14, 2022, citing the passion fruit as a notably smart metaphor for marketing directed at U.S. Latino travelers.
No verified sales lift, bookings uplift, revenue attribution, or brand-tracking data for the 'Maracuyá' campaign is publicly available. Performance figures of this kind were not disclosed by Expedia or Anomaly LA in any source indexed at the time of this analysis.
What is documented is industry recognition. The broader 'Made to Travel' campaign — of which 'Maracuyá' was a constituent film — won in the Hispanic category at the ANA Multicultural Excellence Awards 2022, according to anamulticulturalawards.org. The award was given to the campaign as a whole, with Expedia as client and Anomaly as the credited agency. No separate award was identified specifically for the 'Maracuyá' film as a standalone entry, per anamulticulturalawards.org.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness case rests on several compounding factors. Bilingual production doubled the film's addressable reach within the U.S. Latino audience without requiring a second shoot. Salma Hayek Pinault's dual role as narrator and producer gave the work both cultural credibility and earned media value, as her public profile generated coverage across Forbes and broader entertainment press. The passion fruit device gave journalists and audiences a memorable, repeatable hook — the kind of creative element that sustains social sharing and editorial coverage beyond the paid media buy. The ANA recognition also provided Expedia with third-party validation that the campaign met industry standards for culturally authentic multicultural marketing, a credential that carries weight in category pitches and internal planning cycles. Taken together, these structural qualities support a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 — a result that reflects genuine creative and strategic merit within a competitive travel and tourism landscape, tempered by the absence of disclosed performance data.
Expedia's 'Maracuyá (Passion Fruit)' is a thirty-second bilingual film created by Anomaly LA, released in the United States in September 2022. It uses the passion fruit as a cultural metaphor to connect with Latino travelers and forms part of Expedia's larger 'Made to Travel' multicultural campaign platform, according to expedia.com.
Salma Hayek Pinault narrated the Maracuyá film and also served as its producer, according to expedia.com. The Mexican actress and producer brought personal cultural authority to the campaign, having lived across multiple countries. Her involvement gave the work credibility beyond a standard celebrity voiceover arrangement.
The passion fruit is known by different names across Latin American communities — maracuyá, parchita, fruta de la pasión — making it a natural metaphor for Latino cultural diversity. Anomaly LA used this linguistic plurality as a creative device to reflect the breadth of Latino identity among travelers in the United States, as noted by Adweek in September 2022.
The broader 'Made to Travel' campaign, which includes 'Maracuyá,' won in the Hispanic category at the ANA Multicultural Excellence Awards 2022, according to anamulticulturalawards.org. No separate award was identified for the 'Maracuyá' film as a standalone entry. Expedia is credited as client and Anomaly as the agency.
Expedia produced the Maracuyá film in both Spanish and English, according to expedia.com. This bilingual approach reflected the linguistic reality of Latino households in the United States and extended the campaign's reach without requiring separate production. It was a deliberate strategic step in Expedia's effort to connect with U.S. Latino travelers.
Clapboard rates the Expedia Maracuyá campaign 63 out of 100. The score reflects genuine creative and strategic merit — including a memorable cultural metaphor, bilingual execution, and ANA award recognition — tempered by the absence of any publicly disclosed performance or brand-tracking data from Expedia or Anomaly LA.
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