New Expedia Chief Eyes Global Biz Growth

Former InterActiveCorp CFO Dara Khosrowshahi, who last month took the reins as IAC Travel president and CEO, succeeding Erik Blachford, said the company is committed to growing the Expedia Corporate Travel brand and finding innovative ways to manage business travel.

Khosrowshahi, who will focus on "putting the right people in the right places and empowering them to make decisions and to execute accordingly," said he will rely on ECT president Matt Hulett to focus on the corporate market. Since its inception two years ago, ECT claims to have signed contracts with 1,700 corporate clients. "Business travel is vital," Khosrowshahi said. "It's a $90 billion marketplace and, as part of our mission to be the largest travel company, we have to have a healthy and vital business travel business, not only domestically but also globally."

Khosrowshahi confirmed that ECT plans more global expansion in 2005, having already acquired stakes in two international travel management companies this year. Hulett said western European coverage will continue to be important to ECT, and the Asian market is of particular interest.

"We have some interest from our manufacturing clients that are distributing their networks to India and Asia, and that's a very important marketplace," Hulett said. "We have our claws in some other markets right now."

Canada stands out as a major area of ECT interest in the coming year. "Canada's the right market for us. There's a lot of demand there and adoption's really low. It's a very unique market in terms of carriers and we have great relationships with those carriers," Hulett said, adding that Omar Ahmad, director of supplier relations for Expedia Canada, will be the new managing director of ECT Canada. "We have a really strong guy to run that business and we're excited about it," said Hulett, noting that the team has not yet discussed a timeline for that launch.

Last month, ECT introduced enhancements offering clients greater ad hoc reporting capabilities through its Report Wizard tool, which is based on Expedia's proprietary reporting engine and extensive data warehouse. "We've added a number of custom reports that give a lot more granular detail," said Hulett, referring to the expanded ability to report at the departmental and traveler levels.

Users can now track a traveler's air, hotel or car status while a trip is in progress, create up to 10 custom data fields for collection and analysis, and retrieve expanded reports on policy compliance, adoption and preferred vendor performance. "It's almost a CFO's dream," Hulett said.

Last week, it released to clients functionality to conduct alternate airport searches. Other product enhancements in recent months include touchless upgrade capability, a single-sign on security tool and the Expedia Corporate Rates business merchant hotel program.

Targeting companies in the $1 million to $10 million U.S. booked air volume range, ECT claims an adoption average of 82 percent across its corporate portfolio. Christine Kelly, travel manager at Monster Worldwide, said that before moving to Expedia from a traditional mega TMC in April 2004, Monster had only 2 percent online booking adoption. Within the company's first full month on the Expedia platform, Kelly saw 63 percent adoption and, as of November 2004, Monster had achieved 82 percent adoption.

Hulett said ECT clients likely will hit an adoption ceiling in the mid 80 percent range. "We issued our 50-50 guarantee that we could get people up to 50 percent adoption in 50 days," he said. "We haven't had to write a check yet."