m around the globe at annual forum last week. Lee Hayhurst reports from Las Vegas


GB cycling team spurs push to be customer-centric


The Great British track cycling team that has dominated recent Olympic Games is providing the inspiration for Expedia’s strategy to become more customer-centric.


Expedia brand president Aman Bhutani told delegates in Las Vegas the OTA was seeking to emulate the cycling team’s approach to incremental gains. “Their simple philosophy is to


improve everything by 1% and they do it again and again,” he said. “They do not look for perfection,


they look for improvement; then they compound that improvement.” Bhutani said Expedia would


achieve this by working more closely with partners. “We have been working together


for many years, but when we think about the future, we believe we have to come together in new ways.


“There is a formula for this and it starts with that consumer- centric view.” Bhutani described himself as a “believer in science” and cited a recent neurological study that found human brain activity becomes synced when people tell each other stories. “We can all be in sync. We


believe these stories should be our customers’ stories, our customers’ and your customers’. That’s the definition of being customer-centric,” he said. Expedia has recently started adding links to suppliers’ websites in an acknowledgement that customers cannot always find the information they seek on its website. Bhutani also highlighted a decision to insert an information page in the car hire booking flow


BHUTANI: ‘We believe we have to come together in new ways’


on Expedia to reduce confusion among consumers. Expedia rightly predicted that


this would reduce conversions, but persisted with the experiment and found people who booked having seen this information were more satisfied with their experience. Suppliers reported this led to


fewer no-shows and cancellations, said Bhutani. “That’s what we are looking for.


If we are in sync, we can end up in a world where consumer-centric becomes partner-centric and we all win together.”


Global ambitions for hotel revenue system


Expedia has set its sights on disrupting the hotel revenue management sector with its next generation of technology for hospitality partners. Benoit Jolin, vice-president for global product,


said Expedia’s ambition was to “build a truly global revenue management tool”. He said only 15% of hotels rely on revenue management technology to run their properties and Expedia wanted to develop a system that achieves widespread adoption. “Let’s see if we can take our revenue management platform to the next level to make it easier and more streamlined for you to use it on a regular basis,” said Jolin. Two years ago, Expedia launched a basic


‘pricescraping’ revenue management tool called


Rev+, version two of which went live in September. Nicolas Daudin, senior director of product


management, lodging data technologies, said adoption rates had jumped from thousands of users to 20,000 following the release. However, he told hotel partners taking part in an


inception project to scope out future developments in Rev+ that feedback suggested the tool was complex and difficult to adopt. “If you go back to our original goal of how to disrupt the revenue management sector, the answer is we are not doing that yet,” he said. “We want to define what should be next. We have


proved there is a need for revenue management technology. We have also proved there is a desire to get access to more market information.”


Barry Diller 14 December 2017 travelweekly.co.uk 69


Chairman flags up voice as next big tech development


Voice will have a more immediate impact on business and society than artificial intelligence, Expedia chairman Barry Diller said, with the impact of voice-enabled devices being felt in the next five years. He added: “It’s just the beginning


of what its adoption will be and it’s going to affect a load of things.” Expedia demonstrated its new


voice hotel booking application for Amazon’s Alexa, to be launched within the next couple of months. While Expedia is keeping an eye


on developments with Apple’s Siri and Microsoft's Cortana personal assistants, Alexa and Google Home are the focus of its voice efforts. Diller said he was optimistic


about technology and automation’s long-term impact on jobs and predicted new opportunities would emerge from “creative disruption”. “You can make all sorts of


projections [about jobs] but I believe there will be replacements in all sorts of areas we cannot even conceive of today,” he said. “We’ve been through these cycles


many times before. The industrial revolution meant farmers were no longer needed. There will be a period of destruction before production in the next five, 10, 15 years, which will be disquieting for many people, but out of it will come such bounty in many areas.”


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