DON'T USE EXPEDIA TRAVEL

BACKGROUND

A Brief History of the Online Travel Industry Pioneer

In 1996, a small division within Microsoft launched online travel booking site Expedia.com®, which gave consumers a revolutionary new way to research and book travel. Three years later, Expedia was spun out of Microsoft, becoming a publicly traded company on NASDAQ under the symbol EXPE. Meanwhile, the other brands in the current day Expedia, Inc. portfolio were independently established and began their respective courses of development.

In the first few years of the new millennium, Expedia® became – and remains – the world’s leading online travel company. By 2001, it had acquired a number of other travel companies and in 2002 InterActiveCorp (IAC) acquired a controlling interest in Expedia. Expedia grew within IAC, and its synergies with its parent company’s other travel holdings became more and more salient. In 2005, IAC spun out its travel businesses under the name Expedia, Inc. Today Expedia, Inc. is the parent company to a global portfolio of leading consumer brands.

Expedia’s corporate headquarters are located in Bellevue, Washington, with offices throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions.

Expedia, Inc. employs 8,050 full and part-time employees worldwide across its network of brands, including approximately 1,920 employees of eLong, Inc., a Chinese subsidiary.  These employees make Expedia what it is today, with responsibilities ranging from customer service and website development to securing the best selection of travel options available anywhere.  In fact, Expedia has over 400 employees based in local markets throughout the world who are solely focused on growing and managing Expedia’s valued relationships with hotel and airline partners and other travel suppliers.

Global Presence:

The brands that comprise Expedia, Inc. operate sites localized for more than 70 points of sale in more than 55 countries worldwide.

Advertising:

EXPEDIA will spend more than US$1 billion on sales and marketing in 2008 as the global online travel giant moves to capitalize on the strong sales momentum, it has generated over the past 18 months.

The company is now spending more than 40% of its revenue on sales and marketing - US$283.4m in the first quarter alone … 29% more than the previous year.

Sales and marketing is by far the major cost for Expedia – general and administrative costs come in at 11% of revenue while technology and content consumes 7%.

CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Expedia – which has just reported a first quarter net profit of US$51.3m (up 48% year on year) - will continue turning up the marketing volume.

Financial Highlights:

2008 Gross Bookings: $21.3 Billion
2008 Revenue: $2.93 Billion

WHAT'S WRONG....

With gross bookings of $ 21.3 Billion, a revenue stream of $ 2.93 Billion and projected advertising costs of $ 1 Billion, you can see that Expedia mean business. They'd love to handle all your travel arrangements, book your flights, your hotel rooms and your car rentals. Why ? Because they receive almost 10% of the cost of your trip in booking fees and commissions. Not bad for a few minutes of work, sometimes done solely online without any need to speak to the customer personally, computers simply talking to other computers. 

In theory, it's a great service, one that hooks up the buyer (Client) with the seller (Supplier). Designed to demystify the complexities of modern day travel. With the click of a mouse, you can be jetting off somewhere exotic from the comfort of your home computer, any hour of the day or night, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. 

So what's the problem ?

Quite simply the "Problem" is the "Problem". You see while Expedia love to make money from your bookings, they seem either unwilling or unable to resolve disputes you have with the airlines, hotels or car rental agencies, preferring instead to make you, their customer, deal directly with the supplier. 

Imagine buying a product from a company and then being told to deal directly with the manufacturer when something goes wrong. It happens........but that doesn't make it right. Business is about taking the bad with the good. It's about looking after your customers, rewarding them for their loyalty, being there when they need you the most. Some companies get this important business principle, unfortunately, Expedia isn't one of them.

To make matters worse, there is no transparency. Often, they have a vested interest in many of the companies they recommend and/or deal with yet they fail to make this affiliation known to the general public at the time of purchase. 

I have now been burned three times by EXPEDIA. Three times they have let me down and on all occasions, they have failed to resolve the problem to my satisfaction. If you don't believe me, check out this website, full of more EXPEDIA horror stories:

Link: victimsofexpedia.com

Use Expedia to source out your travel options and then deal directly with the airline, hotel or car rental agency. Don't let Expedia get richer at the expense of poor innocent travelers who believed all the hype. $ 1 Billion buys a lot of hype. 

Buyer beware.........

Please don't use EXPEDIA.

Posted by GD November 21st, 2009