Expedia – Travel Technology Consulting Inc.

August 10, 2009

Innovation in Online Travel

Tweet The general media is a buzz with stories about the lack of innovation of the major OTAs. A recent Forrester Report which shows consumers’ frustration with online travel planning and booking is cited. The report stated that many consumers are fed up with the complicated process of planning and booking travel online. Part of this frustration concerns added fees, […]

March 31, 2009

Innovation in Online Travel

Tweet I am working with Bob Offutt this year screening applicants for the PhoCusWright Innovation Summit in November. This effort has triggered some thoughts about how innovation comes to the market as well as the danger to companies that lack innovation. From 1989-1995 I worked at Sun Microsystems. Part of management training at Sun was reading the book The Paradigm-Shift-Promise-Information-Technology […]

February 21, 2008

Expedia connects into Micros Fidelio

Tweet The Micros Fidelio and Expedia announcement today regarding a new direct connection capability is a significant development for the hospitality industry. A challenge for all hoteliers has always been the distributed nature of property based systems (PMS). Hotel general managers control inventory and pricing through their PMS where they evaluate room occupancy and rates in effort to maximize RevPAR […]

January 23, 2008

What do the Expedia PPC agreement and the Kayak acquistion of Sidestep have in common?

Tweet Two stories from late 2007 and early 2008 signal a shift in the online travel model. In November 2007 at the PhoCusWright conference in Orlando, Expedia announced a new agreement with IHG that included a pay per click (PPC) compensation model. The acquisition of SideStep by Kayak this month is another significant development. How are these two announcements related? […]

November 15, 2007

PhoCusWright – Expedia CEO part II

Tweet During his closing speech at PhoCusWright, Dara mentioned briefly an effort at Expedia to re-platform their technology infrastructure. So what does re-platform mean? Often the plumbing aspects of travel technology are not a common topic at any show including PhoCusWright, but here the re-platform initiative has a direct bearing on how Expedia works with suppliers. It concerns re-engineering their […]

November 15, 2007

PhoCusWright – Expedia CEO

Tweet Dara began with a nod to the new media based deal with IHG. He said Expedia’s focus is to change the traditional impersonal relationship with consumers to be more individualized. Three areas of focus: (1) email (2) Segmentation (3) Search experience – lodging search experience to the next level.(1) Email – described Amazon’s email follow-up after search. Booking window, […]