What is Expedia?
As the world's largest online travel company, Expedia officially entered the Chinese market in 2007 through cooperation with eLong. Its current business departments are spread across the United States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain. TripAdvisor is a brand of Expedia and is currently the world's largest travel community, with an absolute leading position in hotel and attraction review services.
Expedia is a famous American travel website owned by WTE (Worldwide Travel Exchange). The website provides flight reservations, car rental companies, hotels in more than 3,000 locations around the world and super-value room rates. Detailed information about hotels can also be browsed online. As long as travelers enter their ideal price and region, they can get the most immediate and correct quote in the shortest possible time.
Expedia’s development direction 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.
What are the brands under Expedia?
1. 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, hotels, it usually acts as the vanguard when Expedia enters a new area; after it enters, it will expand other businesses.
2. The Hotwire Group: Hotwire is an ambiguous pricing product launched for price-sensitive customers. The prices of these products are generally much lower than the retail prices, but users do not know who supplies the products when making reservations. They only know the basic information of the products. Only after the users have made the reservation will they know the specific products (similar to China’s “Hui Xuan Hotel”). The aim is to absorb the supplier's excess inventory through low prices without damaging its brand. Hotwire also operates the car rental site CarRentals.com and the traveler deals site Travel-ticker.com.
3. Expedia Affiliate Network: This department is responsible for Expedia's co-branded operations; it generates revenue by distributing travel products owned by Expedia brands and Hotels.com through cooperation with third parties.
4. Egencia: Egencia is the business travel management company of Expedia, managing travel affairs for major companies. Egencia currently provides services in 46 countries and regions in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. In 2011, we acquired Travelforce® and Traveldoo® to continue expanding this business.
5. $eLong(LONG)$: eLong is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Expedia in China. It mainly provides hotel reservation services, as well as air ticket and vacation travel product inquiry and reservation services. Elong is also listed on the Nasdaq and currently has a market value of approximately US$500 million.
6. 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 cooperates with hotel suppliers in an agency model (currently Expedia's main income is obtained through the merchant model).
7. Classic Vacations: This division provides online booking services for travel vacation packages through www.classicforagents.com and www.classicvacations.com. Currently, we have operations in Hawaii, the Caribbean, Mexico, Costa Rica, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tahiti.
This is the end of the knowledge about Expedia in this issue. If you want to get more information about Expedia, please pay attention and we will continue to answer your questions~
