Hotel Talk

Expedia's local version to embrace all hotel segments

Looking at inorganic growth to gain market access

Dinkar Farwaha - New Delhi

Online travel giant, Expedia, announced its entry into the country with an India centric website, www.expedia.co.in, which is supported by a customer care center staffed with Hindi and English speaking agents.

The OTA will offer a platform for hotels in the lower end of the classification rung to go online. In an exclusive interview with Express TravelWorld, Henrik Kjellberg, president, Expedia Asia Pacific, said, "In our endeavour to offer each and every product available in the market to our customers, we have decided to focus equally on all the segments." He continued, "We have already tied up with 300 premium and upscale properties in the country. We are focusing on the lower end too and aim to offer technology and market solutions to such hotels." The new site, which is the group's 17th country specific branded site, will list approximately 80,000 hotels across all the segments globally. Meanwhile, to expand aggressively in the online market in the country, the group is also looking at the inorganic growth model.

"We are looking at acquiring existing online travel companies in the country to gain a foothold in the Indian market," revealed Sharat Dhall, managing director, Expedia India, adding that the Indian online travel market was estimated to be worth over US $2 billion for 2007-08. In 2007, Expedia had gross bookings of approximately US $20 billion, with 26 million people logging on for hotel rooms and 22 million making airplanes bookings. The company is looking to grow its international revenue to half of its total revenue through emerging travel markets such as India.