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Expedia planning to launch new method of buying air tickets, hotel nights

September 03, 2012 | Online Travel

Expedia is setting up an India research and development team with around 300 technologists who will work on new travel applications. One product will be a new method of buying air tickets to be released by the end of this year and later for its hotels and packages.

Expedia Inc., the world’s largest online travel agent by bookings, plans to make India a hub for its business and technology development operations, similar to its development centres in North America and Europe.

The company is setting up an India research and development (R&D) team, the largest such group in the Asia-Pacific, with around 300 technologists, who will work on new travel applications for local as well as global travel markets.

Expedia said it has started getting return on investments it had made on technology in the last four years. The company, which invested $350 million (around Rs.1,949 crore today) in 2011 on technology, is considering spending the same or more in the current year.

“In all other R&D centres in North America and Europe, we have a strong presence of one of our brands. But in India we don’t have a flagship brand; all our brands are equally present,” said Edmond Mesrobian, chief technology officer at Expedia. “Here, we will have technology teams from all our business brands as well as shared infrastructure, services and organization. This location will have our operations teams, data centres, core common infrastructure, our search and supply teams, and people building that experience. It is a unique mixture.”

“Whatever work we do here is going to impact us across the globe, across our brands and applications,” he said. “The only other place where there is that kind of presence is Seattle.”

At present, Expedia has development centres in key locations in North America and Europe, including London, Seattle, Springfield, San Francisco and Germany.

Expedia is focusing on revenue coming from outside North America. “This is our investment in future. We have realized that we cannot grow by staying in North America. It is very competitive there…there is a contraction in market where we happen to have a presence,” said Mesrobian.

“We chose India because we wanted to be able to grow our population of technical talent and be able to address new market area.”

Expedia, which entered India in 2008, and got into an equal joint venture with Air Asia in 2011, has been expanding its brand presence in the country since last year.

“The company will ramp up its presence in India as it is maturing and showing good consumer adaptation towards online travel compared to other markets in the region which are either saturated or in early stages of online travel, and will be able to leverage Indian talent at regional level on global scale,” said Chetan Kapoor, research analyst, Asia Pacific, at travel researcher PhoCusWright.

The company said it will be releasing a new method of buying air tickets by the end of this year and will emulate the same for its hotels and packages.

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