What is Expedia? Expedia Review

Basic Introduction

Expedia owns 12 brands, including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Expedia Affiliate Network, Classic Vacations, Expedia Local Expert, Egencia, Expedia CruiseShipCenters, eLong, Venere, trivago and carRentals.com, covering hotels, air tickets, car rentals, luxury cruises, activities, destination travel services, business travel services, and travel media and advertising services.

Business Model

As an online travel product booking service provider, Expedia does not provide travel products itself, but mainly helps travel product suppliers sell products, thereby obtaining "commission" income. The "commission" can be obtained by Expedia charging a certain percentage after selling products at the price specified by the supplier, which is called the Agency model; or Expedia can obtain products from suppliers at a fixed price and then earn the difference in sales, which is called the Merchant model. In this case, Expedia has the pricing power of the product.

Sub-brand

Expedia Worldwide: Expedia.com operates in 25 countries including the United States, and can provide travel product booking services related to air tickets, hotels, car rentals, cruises, vacation products, and destination services; its target customer base is also relatively broad, including family vacationers, individual travelers, and business travelers. In addition, Expedia Worldwide also established a joint venture with the low-cost airline AirAsia on July 1, 2011, and Expedia.com has obtained the exclusive right to display AirAsia content.

Hotels.com Worldwide: Hotels.com is a pure hotel booking website that currently operates in 75 countries and regions around the world. Because the website only has one business, it usually acts as the vanguard when Expedia enters a new region; after it enters, it will expand other businesses.

The Hotwire Group: Hotwire is a fuzzy pricing product for price-sensitive customers. The prices of these products are generally much lower than retail prices, but users do not know who supplies the products when booking, only basic information about the products; only after booking do users know the specific products (similar to China's "selected hotels"). The purpose of this is to digest the supplier's excess inventory through low prices without damaging its brand. Hotwire also operates the car rental website CarRentals.com and the traveler transaction website Travel-ticker.com.

Expedia Affiliate Network: This division is responsible for Expedia's co-branded operations; it generates revenue by distributing travel products owned by Expedia brands and Hotels.com through partnerships with third parties.

Egencia: Egencia is the business travel management company of Expedia, managing travel affairs for major companies. Currently, Egencia provides services in 46 countries and regions in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. In 2011, it acquired Travelforce® and Traveldoo? to continue to expand this business.

$Elong (LONG)$: Elong is a holding subsidiary of Expedia in China, mainly providing hotel reservation services, as well as air ticket and vacation travel product query and reservation services. Elong is also listed on NASDAQ and currently has a market value of approximately US$500 million.

Venere: www.venere.com is also a hotel booking website, but it only displays the hotels in a city in the form of a list; and it cooperates with hotel suppliers in an agency model (currently Expedia's main income is obtained through the merchant model).

Classic Vacations: This division provides online booking services for vacation packages through www.classicforagents.com and www.classicvacations.com. It currently operates in Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico, Costa Rica, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tahiti.

Expedia Local Expert (ELE): ELE provides one-on-one travel consulting services for high-end travelers, including travel destinations, attractions, travel routes and other travel products, and even some adventure activities selection and booking services. ELE is also responsible for the operation of www.localexpert.com.

Expedia CruiseShipCenters: CruiseShipCenters is a cruise vacation product seller in North America, with 150 retail stores, 3,600 professional cruise consultants, and online search for more than 10,000 cruise vacation products. Expedia is the company's major shareholder.

In China

The first Chinese Internet company Expedia acquired was eLong, and in December 2004 it became the largest shareholder of NASDAQ-listed eLong.

In 2009, Expedia accelerated its business expansion in China. It first launched the travel review website Daodao.com in April, and then acquired the travel search engine Kuxun.com for more than US$12 million in October.

Development History

Expedia's history can be traced back to 1996, when Microsoft launched Expedia.com, a website for tourists to search and book travel products online. Three years later, Expedia was spun off from Microsoft and listed independently on NASDAQ (also with the code EXPE), and Expedia, Inc. was born.

In 2000, it acquired Travelscape.com.

In February 2002, Expedia, Inc was acquired and privatized by InterActiveCorp's (now IAC/InterActiveCorp, hereinafter referred to as IAC). At this time, Expedia had expanded its business to the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, New Zealand, Canada, etc., and expanded its corporate travel management business.

On August 9, 2005, Expedia, Inc. was spun off from IAC, and Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire, TripAdvisor and other travel-related businesses were listed under the same ticker symbol EXPE. After the listing, Expedia's revenue in 2005 reached US$2.1 billion, and its net profit was US$230 million; it became the world's largest online travel company.

From June 2003 to January 2005, Expedia was acquired and privatized by IAC (InterActiveCorp). During this period, IAC also acquired Hotels.com, Hotwire, Egencia, TripAdvisor and other travel websites;

In 2007, it established a long-term strategic alliance with CruiseShipCenters and was selected into the S&P 500;

In 2008, the business travel service company was named Egencia, and the European Venere.com website was acquired and an alliance network was established;

In February 2009, the company launched PassportAds and StorePoint Expandables media solutions and announced the cancellation of all hotel, car rental, cruise and almost all flight booking change and cancellation fees, and no longer charged online airline booking fees; and launched the commission-based Easy Manage hotel agency project in Europe;

In 2010, Expedia was named the world’s largest online travel company, launching the fuzzy hotel booking model through Hotwire and acquiring the powerful mobile travel app Mobiata;

In May 2011, it entered the Chinese market through its subsidiary eLong and Tencent’s cooperation;

In September 2011, a joint venture was established with AirAsia;

On December 20, 2011, Expedia, Inc. packaged its travel media businesses, including TripAdvisor, and listed them on the NASDAQ under the code "TRIP"; Expedia retained transaction-related businesses such as hotels, air tickets, car rentals, cruises and other vacation travel products.

In May 2012, Egencia completed the acquisition of VIA Travel, a Nordic travel management company;

In July 2012, Expedia Traveler Preference Tool (ETP) was launched;

In December 2012, eLong and Expedia expanded into a global travel partnership;

In March 2013, it acquired a majority stake in Trivago, the world's leading hotel metasearch company;

In August 2013, Expedia and Travelocity announced a strategic marketing agreement;

As of December 31, 2013, Expedia had opened 150 travel booking sites in 70 countries around the world.

References