Aqute Market Research: Expedia strategy & financials

Expedia, Inc: "today announced financial results on a combined basis for the second quarter ended June 30, 2005. "

Aqute Market Research: Expedia strategy: "Financially, Expedia has been doing fine. Not stellar search-portal performance but perfectly respectable...But in terms of strategy, Expedia, as a representative of the online travel industry, has not been "mixing it up" to the same extent as the other beacons of the Internet world. I need not mention here the vast array of projects being tried by Google and Yahoo, and even MSN. Some good, some bad, but plenty of ideas that will shape the online world...

Luckily for Expedia, while it spend the past three years producing no innovation, annoying its suppliers and generally stagnating, its competitors have done little to take away Expedia's lead. Now, Expedia's strategy team should start addressing the dangers that Expedia will face in 2006 before it has to step out on the back foot...

Local search: esp the battle between Yell and Google in the UK. Why is Expedia a non-existent player in this space? Expedia cannot remain bound by its mandate from 5 years ago. Local search, local travel information, local hotel and tourist attraction details are all important to Expedia - but its share of users will be chipped away by focused local search providers

Vertical search / dynamic aggregation Last week, job aggregation site Indeed.com received $5 million in funding. Google has been working on various flavours of vertical search including travel for a while now. The until-now slow development of vertical search has lulled Expedia into a false sense of security but the question is when, not if, hugely capable players with web platform experience (Google, MSN, Yahoo ... and niche sites like Indeed), tackle the travel sector

Savvy hotel and airline companies websites than you can find on Expedia. And all the best hotels are now fully online with very appealing websites.

While Expedia has not done much worth noting in the past few years, its competitors (and particularly its competitors-elect) have failed to take advantage of this weakness. This inefficiency in the market will come to the fore in 2005-06. Right now, everyone but Expedia seems to be gearing up for the new battle over online travel"