NEWS TRAVEL WEEKLY BUSINESS CONTINUED FROM THE BACK


for dynamic packaging. Nathan Johnson, Expedia


product director, said package customers travel more often, spend more, book earlier and cancel less frequently, yet only 15% of the OTA’s users are presented with package savings. “There is a reason for this,”


said Johnson. “We force you to choose a path and when you choose a path you do not see package savings. It’s our structure that we have built. “What if we can show savings


to 100% of our shoppers? If we show customers a good package saving, that makes them better customers for you and for us.” Hoteliers were told they


could offer opaque deals for package bookers without undermining their public pricing policies. Expedia itself may also use its margin to fund package savings. Ike Anand, Expedia vice-


president of strategy, said: “You have to give customers savings to book packages as a trade-off for less flexibility. “And you have to give them


savings early in the process. It cannot be last-minute, distressed inventory in the package path.” Aman Bhutani, Expedia


brand president, said he expected shopping cart to work well when introduced to European markets, where the OTA already sells a decent amount of packages. Asked how Expedia expects


to compete with established package operators, he said the OTA already had a sizeable share of the beach market, but added: “We compete, but we also power. “We recently did a deal with Thomas Cook to provide hotels. We do not see it as we have to beat them or compete with them; we bring something different to the table.”


Expedia Partner Conference 2017: OTA hosts 5,000 partners from


Okerstrom vows to pick up pace of online innovation


Expedia will strive to put the ‘O’ back into OTA, new Expedia boss Mark Okerstrom told the global travel giant’s annual partner conference in Las Vegas last week.


Okerstrom, formerly Expedia’s


chief financial officer, took over from Dara Khosrowshahi three months ago after Khosrowshahi unexpectedly quit to become chief executive of Uber. The Expedia president and


chief executive indicated no great departure from his predecessor’s strategy except for speeding up the pace of innovation. “In the race of man versus machine, so far man has won, but in the future we think the machine can win,” Okerstrom said. “We want to put the O back in OTA.” He said the first 20 years of


online travel had been about taking the old travel agency GDS green screen and putting it onto consumer devices. But he said the travel agent of


yesteryear used to do a lot more than today’s OTA – something he said Expedia intends to change. For example, he cited plans to


Expedia ‘in pole position to be first $100bn agency’


Expedia boss Mark Okerstrom said he was optimistic about growth prospects for travel and that Expedia was well positioned to become the world’s first $100 billion travel agency. “The math and strategy are


very much in our favour,” said Okerstrom when asked about


68 travelweekly.co.uk 14 December 2017


OKERSTROM: ‘We want to accelerate our global push and be consumer- centric’


adapt business travel brand Egencia’s offering for leisure, to enhance its services, such as automatically rebooking flights for holidaymakers if they are delayed. Expedia will also invest some of


its $1.3 billion annual technology budget in areas such as voice, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies such as blockchain. Okerstrom said it won’t do this


in isolation but will work more closely with partners to build the technologies they say they need.


Expedia’s prospects compared with those of rivals such as Airbnb and Google. He said 2017 was a year when


“the world went crazy”, as political events, terrorism and natural disasters hit people’s propensity to travel. But despite that, people were travelling more than ever, with the sector worth $1.6 trillion in 2016, he said. Okerstrom added that Expedia


was “almost done expanding our borders”. He said: “We have a few more flags to plant, but have


“You are going to see an


extension of what we have been doing all along,” Okerstrom told the audience of around 5,000 partners. “We want to do it faster. We


want to accelerate our global push and be consumer-centric. “We want to accelerate the


speed of innovation internally. “We are at the very early stages


of digital innovation in travel and are better when we innovate together.”


largely completed the land grab for being present across the world. “Now it’s time to be relevant


in any markets we choose to be, so it feels like you are working with a local travel agency, being locally relevant on a global basis. “We want to be the number


one or number-two choice in any market around the world. “We want to give you the


choice to work with the market leader anywhere.”


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