E-business
1. Introduction
Expedia is a travelling website that is located in the United States of America with sites localized for several other countries. The site makes it possible for a number of services for the travelling passengers. There is the possibility of booking airline tickets, placing reservations for hotels, renting cars, cruises, taking a vacation and several other attractions and services over the internet as well as on phone using travel agents (Expedia, 2012). The website make use of a global distribution model for instance the Amadeus or Sabre reservation model for airlines and hotels. It has a hotel reservation system connected to contracted, bulk-rated reservations.
The site offers clients value for their leisure and business travel, controls increment demands and direct bookings to suppliers on transit and offers advertisers the chance to acquire valuable listeners of in-market travel clients using Expedia Media Solutions (Expedia Inc, 2012). Expedia additionally makes available bookings for several airlines and hotels, top client brands, great traffic websites and several affiliates using the Expedia Affiliate Network.
The website encompasses a great part of study, development and booking travel from selection of the most operative airline seat to getting reviews of hotels, to preparing what to undertake in destination after arriving. The website aims to meet client demand and satisfaction.
2. Domain Table of Expedia
NetRange: 216.251.112.0 – 216.251.127.255
CIDR: 216.251.112.0/20
OriginAS:
NetName: EXPEDIA-ECOMMERCE-OPERATIONS
NetHandle: NET-216-251-112-0-1
Parent: NET-216-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
RegDate: 2003-03-17
Updated: 2012-03-02
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-216-251-112-0-1
OrgName: Expedia, Inc.
OrgId: EXPEDI-9
Address: 333 108th Ave. NE
City: Bellvue
StateProv: WA
PostalCode: 98004
Country: US
RegDate: 2002-01-30
Updated: 2011-09-24
Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/EXPEDI-9
OrgAbuseHandle: EXPED1-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Expedia-Network-Engineering
OrgAbusePhone: +1-866-679-7227
OrgAbuseEmail: neteng@expedia.com
OrgAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/EXPED1-ARIN
OrgNOCHandle: NOCOP-ARIN
OrgNOCName: Expedia-Network-Operation
OrgNOCPhone: +1-866-679-7227
OrgNOCEmail: neteng@expedia.com
OrgNOCRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/NOCOP-ARIN
OrgTechHandle: EXPED1-ARIN
OrgTechName: Expedia-Network-Engineering
OrgTechPhone: +1-866-679-7227
OrgTechEmail: neteng@expedia.com
OrgTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/EXPED1-ARIN
RTechHandle: EXPED1-ARIN
RTechName: Expedia-Network-Engineering
RTechPhone: +1-866-679-7227
RTechEmail: neteng@expedia.com
RTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/EXPED1-ARIN
Source: (Who is my domain, 2012)
3. Revenue Model of Expedia
Expedia has had $21.8 billion in gross turnover accruing revenue of $2.9 billion in 2009. The revenue acquired is due to commissions, fees and advertising and media revenue. A number of the branded and unbranded hotel companies have settled with Expedia and issue great commissions to this organization. In the following year, the Expedia issued an intensive look in the model of operation which is based on five elements;
There is absence of risk for the company. Expedia is merchant of record; it does not have any inventory of risk. What takes place in the hotel similarly takes place for Expedia. The company acquires cash prior to travelling from the passengers and issues payments to hoteliers a number of days later. At the same time, the company acquires money using the same money that it acquires. There is also the aspect of packaging and selling. Expedia is stably in search of a chance to package a hotel strongly with some goods. This makes it possible to acquire higher levels by packaging as opposed to individual elements (Travolon, 2010). Moreover, the company has a lasting relationship with its operations. Expedia has 1-3 years of contracts with a number of chain lodging properties. This offers stability and allows forecasting to be done much easily. Lastly, the company offers consultant services to clients. Considering that Expedia has several databases containing client data, the company has been able to form a change from being an aggressive sales body to offering consulting services from the account managers. This accords a lot of intelligence to the hoteliers and owners of some assets.
The revenue model shows that Expedia is a perfect sales channel for hoteliers, as hotels are a good source of revenue for the company. For instance a $350 for a stay at a luxury hotel will result to $350 for the traveler to pay, translating to a cost of $280 for Expedia and $70 as revenue to Expedia.
4. Strategic Alliance
Expedia has formed alliances with a number of commercial bodies with the intention of promoting itself as the best travelling choice. This effort in additionally brings about more revenue for Expedia and the selected destination. The strategic alliance is established between the wholesale retailer and the destination which brings about an attractive promotion using the social media. A good example is the destination called Mexico’s Pacific Treasure.
One has to travel and be able to win a trip to Riviera Nayarit with friends so as to have a pleasant experience. One is able to enjoy the travel due to the FriendTrips campaign which has been created by the travel operator Expedia (The Villa Group, 2011). The promotion strategy is targeted at putting an end to consumers and is due to an integrated strategy with Villa Resort & Spa which is being advanced in the social media.
Expedia is a well known travel brand globally and a dependable resource for clients. The microsites that are spread has a large number of resources for clients, for instance in Mexico they are 800,000 making Expedia to acquire 59 million visitors using its websites.
In a strategic alliance with Riviera Nayarit, Expedia is involved in FriendTrips games in Facebook so as to create information in the site and destination in other social sites. The FriendTrips is an application on Facebook that makes it possible for users to engage in a game. The maximum number of points awarded results to winning a trip to the stated destination. The main intention is to bring about an increase in visitors to the site hence promoting Expedia. This applies the fact that the internet is an increasingly influential mechanism. It is a growing aspect for hotel reservations. It is in this sense that the alliance is a vital component for the destination.
5. Web Standard Checklist
Quality of code: Expedia uses a doctype of the form XHTML 1.0 Transitional
The site uses an application that blocks some characters applied in XSS attacks which is controlled by URL-encoding the needed character for instance issuing %253c as opposed to < character.
The site applies a valid XHTML known as a transitional XHTML. The validation is important with regard to the contents for instance personal attempts, birthday, and email address.
The site makes use of a valid CSS.
Site Map
The site does not use the CSS hacks.
All of the classes or ids applied in the Expedia website are important as they are vital in making requests for an application among others. As noted above, the codes applied are well structured making it easy to understand.
The site is keen not making the clients to be pleased and not get offended with the structure and links applied in the website (Weakley, 2004). There are hence no broken links which would act as a vital client drive away. With regard to the size of the page and speed, the site offers the user excellent speed leading to convenience and ability to explore more pages which are of reliable size. Moreover, errors in JavaScript are not present; pop ups.
Degree of separation of content and presentation: The site makes use of CSS in regards to fonts, colors, borders among others. This makes the appearance of the website to be pleasant to the user as well as accord emphasis on certain words. The images applied are in XHTML and some limited element of CSS.
!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
Accessibility for User: The alt attributes are applied in all of the descriptive images
The site applies relative units for the text size making emphasis on some words and leaving others. Any attempt to increase the size of the font leads to a break of the layout of the website. There is application of skip menus with forms and tables that are easy to access. The color applied is sufficing and pleasant in brightness.Accessibility: Since Expedia is a commercial site, its accessibility has to be easy for the user. This has been seen in; the browsers, CSS, images, browsers, when printed and in devices that are hand held.
Usability: its usability is quite satisfactory, the content is clear in viewing, navigation and language. The site is easy to locate using its contacts through phone and email. Searches are available for destinations among others. There is a link applied directing one to the home page, they links are well defined.
Site management: the site has a 404 error page that tells the user on the depth of the site. This is convenient to the user. Moreover, the URLs applied friendly to the many visitors of the site, which also works with no ‘www’. The favicon is applied in the site to promote it in other sites.
6. Expedia Marketing Strategy
Expedia is a perfect example of an online business that employs contemporary marketing elements in their overall marketing strategy to support the elements of Internet strategy captured in the marketing mix (Doole & Lowe, 2008, 435). The website has invested heavily in traditional advertising such as radio and TV for the purpose of attracting traffic to their site where business is conducted online. As part of its strategic Internet marketing plan, Expedia uses a visitor registration form on their website from which email addresses of interested prospects are retrieved. The website creates newsletters and forwards to the interested prospects on a regular basis. In addition, Expedia uses more word of mouth along with customer reviews to market and advertise so as to minimize its advertising costs (Boone & Kurtz, 2009, 98).
Through Expedia’s Platinum Marketing Program, the website guarantees travelers booking on Expedia.com access to the same low rates offered anywhere else. This includes to a website of the car rental company of choice. Expedia further guarantees its customers excellent customer care as well as special offers.
In addition, Expedia.com has entered a multi-year sponsorship agreement with the National Football League (NFL). In this arrangement, Expedia is the NFL’s official travel sponsor where it provides year-round travel incentives to about 170 NFL fans together with unique packages and sweepstakes for marquee events such as the Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl. The basic marketing strategy for Expedia.com is therefore a number of efficiency initiatives like advertising through the Media, word of mouth, and customer reviews and low rates offerings (Clarke & Flaherty, 2005, 35).
The Expedia.com website is aimed at all online travelers, service providers in the airline industry and advertisers. It is targeted towards a diversity of product type, namely: hotel, activity, vacation package, air, cruise, and car.
Expedia provides flexible customer relationship management (CRM) solutions to its customers. It does this from its affiliate, salesforce.com, which is highly adapted to the unique and evolving needs of the fast-paced clients in the travel and business industries. The website demonstrates CRM by its commitment to saving time and money and ensuring utmost security of their customer data. Expedia affords customers the unique freedom to make changes to their initial specifications by themselves without incurring much costs and spending a lot of time on programmers and consultants. Average customization time ranges between 10-15 minutes (Applefield, 2010, 40).
Expedia does its advertising through its advertising sales division called Expedia Media solutions. The website reaches 50 percent of all online travel shoppers through such new behavioral marketing products like PassportAds and TravelAds. As such, the Expedia Media Solutions enables advertisers to access about 2.3 million unique users visiting the website every month. It also runs advertisements targeted at customers through banner ads, promotional activities, sponsorship opportunities, and placement in Theme Stores, etc.
It is easy for an interested user to access Expedia.com site via social networking media such as Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter (Umar, 2004, 10).
7. Logistics at Expedia.com
Expedia has arguably the best management of logistics for their products among all the websites that offer online travel services. The website has been designed to make it relatively easier for its customers to plan and purchase online travel. The website has details on air fares, hotels, and car rental, together with options for selecting preferred airline seat, accessing real-time flight information, and a comprehensive directory of hotels as well as bed-and-breakfast inns. The Expedia World Guide has a variety of destinations, while the Flight Wizard, Hotel Wizard and Car Wizard are consolidated into a single screen which significantly reduces download time.
8. Payment systems at Expedia.com
There is a number of flexible payment systems present at the Expedia site. A customer can pay via Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, Debit cards and Diners Club. These systems are mostly available for initial bookings because most reservations call for payment or a deposit at the time of booking. A “Bill Me Later” payment option is also available except for reservations and bookings (Horner & Swarbrooke, 2012, 181).
Flight bookings demand full payment when making a reservation. Majority of hotel bookings also require full payment at the point of reservation. However, a number of properties have the Pay Now or Pay Later options. Pay Later bookings require a customer to provide their credit card information as a guarantee of their commitment to reservation. Charges are done at the hotel during check in and check out. When a customer pays by deposit, the balance must be paid 30 days before day of departure. However, a customer needs to book the package at least 40 days before departure to qualify for this advantage (Horner & Swarbrooke, 2012, 182). When a customer makes a deposit, it is automatically billed on their credit card or an e-mail remainder is sent when it’s time to settle the remainder.
Customers who book flight and hotel at the same time have a couple of payment options: through one credit card or with two credit cards. Furthermore, a customer has the option to share the trip cost with his or her travel companion. These flexible payment options are available when a customer builds their own custom flight + hotel vacation package. The options are not extended to pre-packaged vacations, and not all packages qualify for the flexible payment options.
Customers seeking to book for a cruise at Expedia.com, can make a partial deposit provided that their cruise departure is in more than 60 days in the future. A confirmation email lists the due dates of the outstanding payment. Missing a payment attracts cancellation of the reservation by the cruise line and refund is not guaranteed. Furthermore, Expedia charges the defaulting customer a cancellation penalty charged per cabin. There are no fees or interest charges on customers for booking or making reservations.
9. Security at Expedia.com
Expedia.com gathers the full name, date of birth, and gender information for ever passenger on all applicable flights. This security procedure enables airlines to forward passenger information to the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in line with the TSA Secure Flight Program. The information must compliment the valid-government-issued identification used when travelling.
Furthermore, Expedia.com has a Credit Card Guarantee which guarantees protection when a customer makes a purchase or reservation via the website. Customers are advised to report fraud claims to their respective credit card proves and contact Expedia in instances where any unauthorized charges are reflected on their credit card statement in the period of 12 months of the customer’s last Expedia.com transaction. Expedia.com further promises to cover liability of up to $50 if the credit card provider charges the customer for any unauthorized transactions emanating from a reservation or purchase on Expedia.com. However, this is after fulfillment of terms and conditions provided by the website.
Expedia.com guarantees the safety of customer information because the transactions are safeguarded by Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption technology in conjunction with Private Communication Technology (PCT) standards. The SSL serves to encrypt the personal information of customer retrieved from a credit card number, name, telephone number, and address before the customer browses the Website.
Expedia.com also provides a phone number for customers who are uncomfortable of sending their personal information or credit card number over the Internet can reach and make bookings.
Disclaimers at Expedia.com
• Expedia, Inc. is not responsible for content on external web sites
• Offers are subject to availability and may be discontinued without notice. Additional restrictions and blackout dates may apply.
• Expedia will never send an email (or call) asking you to verify passwords or other personal or financial information.
• Links that appear to be related to the site being impersonated, or “spoofed” (e.g., http://expedia-security.com, which is not an Expedia site).
10. Analytics at Expedia.com
Expedia.com has made use of different forms of analytics, where there is communication of significant patterns in data: Retail sales analytics, Financial services analytics, Risk & Credit analytics, Talent analytics, Marketing analytics, Behavioral analytics, Collections analytics, Fraud analytics, Pricing analytics, Telecommunications, Supply Chain analytics, and Transportation analytics. Examples of marketing, financial services, sales, an pricing analytics found at the website are given below:
a) Marketing Analytics
i) Most trusted – analytics include Used by most people online, Worldwide call centers, and 200 staff in Australia
ii) Best Value – No Expedia fees, Book flight + hotel and save, and Price promise
iii) Biggest choice – information on the site include 150,000+ hotels, and 130+ airlines
b) Sales analytics – information in this category include Global sale up to 50% off worldwide hotels
c) Financial services analytics – The analytics in this section includes Cheap hotels & accommodation
d) Pricing Analytics – These include information on last minute accommodation, Featured hotel specials, package deals, featured flight specials, cheap domestic and international flights, car hire deals, cheap car hire.
The display of the different forms of analytics at Expedia.com is professional. The analytics are visible enough and accompanied with supporting pictorials and links. In December 2011, Expedia.com won the Web analytics award for data crunching because it has significantly transformed great volumes of data into useful insights that helps visitors of the site in reaching informed decision making (Horner & Swarbrooke, 2012, 181).
References
Applefield, D, 2010, The Unofficial Guide to Paris, New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Boone, E. L, & Kurtz, L, D, 2009, Contemporary Learning, Connecticut: Cengage Learning.
Clarke, I, & Flaherty, T, 2005, Advances In Electronic Marketing, Pennsylvania: Idea Group Inc (IGI).
Doole, I, & Lowe, R, 2008, International Marketing Strategy: Analysis, Development and Implementation, Connecticut: Cengage Learning.
Expedia, 2012, viewed from http://www.expedia.com.au/Activities
Expedia Inc, 2012, viewed from http://www.expediainc.com/
Horner, S, & Swarbrooke, J, 2012, International Cases in Tourism Management, London: Routledge.
The Villa Group, 2011, Expedia invites you to visit Riviera Nayarit, viewed from http://www.villagroupresorts.com/media/press-releases/vle-nayarit-expedia
Travolon, 2010, Expedia: their hotel business model in 5 bullet points, viewed from: http://www.travolon.com/component/content/article/116-english/384-expedia-their- hotel-business-model-in-5-bullet-points-.html
Umar, A, 2004, Third Generation Distributed Computing Environments, Pennsylvania: Nge solutions
Weakley, R. 2004, Web standards checklist, viewed from: http://www.maxdesign.com.au/articles/checklist/
Who is my domain, 2012, viewed from: http://www.whoismydomain.eu/whois/216.251.120.22
