Expedia has worked with thousands of social media influencers over the past decade, but a decision to partner with Darren Jason Watkins Jr set off a frisson of nervousness at the travel portal.Watkins, known to his 50 million followers on both YouTube and Twitch as IShowSpeed, specialises in livestreaming — a chaotic and unscripted environment where anything can go wrong. His subscribers view everything from real-time travelogues to video gaming marathons. Sometimes, they even watch him sleep.After the deal was first mooted, there was “a lot of concern” at Expedia’s headquarters in Seattle, acknowledges chief communications officer Lauri Metrose. “When you do anything live there’s stuff you can’t control and there’s so much risk involved from a brand perspective that people tend to shy away from it.”But the company’s leadership ultimately judged that missing out on a chance to reach younger audiences, via one of the most watched people in the world, was an even greater risk. “You can’t age yourself out,” Metrose says.The first event of the partnership was a 12-hour livestream in April that followed the 21-year-old content creator as he took in five different countries in the Caribbean. Expedia simultaneously launched a customised travel booking website, dubbed “Exspeedia”.