HAT202 Business Portfolio: Expedia Travel Company's Market Analysis

This business portfolio provides an in-depth analysis of Expedia Travel Company within the Australian hospitality and tourism market. It covers Expedia's current business operations, including product offerings (hotels, rental cars, flights, holiday packages), online location and distribution strategies, discounting pricing models, target customer segments (high-income travelers, business entrepreneurs, families), branding and positioning, and current promotion and marketing efforts through social media. The report also recommends future marketing campaigns involving direct response strategies, mobile solutions, awarded blogs, and cinema advertising, along with a new innovative idea of introducing surfing competitions to attract tourists. This document offers a comprehensive overview of Expedia's business strategies and potential areas for improvement and innovation. Desklib provides a platform for students to access similar solved assignments and past papers.

Business Portfolio 1
The Hospitality and Tourism Market
Business Portfolio
The case study of Expedia Travel Company
Student Name:
Student Number:
Module Code: HAT202
Submission Date:

Business Portfolio 2
Contents
1. Introductory Summary of Expedia Travel Company............................................................................3
2. Current Business Operation.................................................................................................................3
2.1. Product.........................................................................................................................................3
2.2. Location.......................................................................................................................................4
2.3. Distribution..................................................................................................................................5
2.4. Pricing models.............................................................................................................................6
2.5. Customer segments......................................................................................................................6
2.6. Branding and positioning.............................................................................................................7
2.7. Current promotion and marketing................................................................................................7
3. Recommended Future Campaigns.......................................................................................................8
3.1. Direct Response...........................................................................................................................8
3.2. Mobile Solutions..........................................................................................................................8
3.3. Awarded Blogs............................................................................................................................9
3.4. Cinema.........................................................................................................................................9
4. Recommended New and Innovative Idea............................................................................................9
References.................................................................................................................................................10

Business Portfolio 3
1. Introductory Summary of Expedia Travel Company
The Australian hospitality and tourism market comprises generation of revenue from
foodservice, passenger rail, travel intermediaries, hotels and motels, and casinos and gaming.
The travel intermediaries where Expedia Travel Company operates, operates as part of a business
that helps in selling travel products and services to customers (Travel & Tourism Industry
Profile: Australia, 2016). According to the report by the Market Line, some of the products
offered by the travel intermediaries include railway tickets, holiday packages, hotels, car rentals,
and airline tickets. Among the six categories in the industry, the travel intermediary ranks third
with a market of 10.3% behind airlines and food service. Expedia Travel Company is a travel
booking company that specializes in selling of travel products and services to domestic and
international customers beyond Australia. As indicated in the company website
(https://www.expedia.com/), Expedia Travel specializes in selling of travel services in airlines,
cars, flights, hotels, rental cars, holiday packages, vacation rentals, and airline tickets. Expedia
Travel operations involve receiving tourists across the world that come to Australia by offering
them products and travel services. Furthermore, the company also links passengers to hotels and
accommodation services by selling tickets to passengers (Expedia Travel, 2018).
2. Current Business Operation
2.1. Product
Expedia Travel operates as a travel intermediary. as indicated in figure 1 below, it
specializes in selling of different travel products and services to tourists. For example, currently,
it offers different products that include hotels, rental cars, and flight deals for those that need
pleasure or travelling for businesses, vocational rentals for families, groups, or individuals.

Business Portfolio 4
Furthermore, the business offers holiday packages for those willing to go on holiday vacations to
areas such as Polo Towers Resorts, Floridays Resorts, and Sedona Summit Resort, and among
other resorts.
Figure 1: Expedia Travel products and services
Source: https://www.expedia.com/?&langid=1033
2.2. Location
Expedia Group currently owns Expedia Travel. It only operates as an online
booking point for customers that want vacation packages, cruises, car rentals, hotel reservations,
and airline tickets. Furthermore, it is important to understand that while Expedia has its
headquarters at Bellevue in Washington, the company expiates to relocate over the next one year
to start operating at Seattle in Washington.

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Figure 2: Expedia online location
Source: https://www.expedia.com/
2.3. Distribution
Expedia Travel utilizes online platform to meet all its distribution processes. The
company allows customers to access the website and place their bookings depending on their
needs.
Figure 3: online booking platform by Expedia Travel Company

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2.4. Pricing models
Expedia Travel Company applies discounting pricing model to attract customers
to make bookings. The company gives discount depending on special occasions, tourists
travelling as a group, or for customers that take combined packages.
Figure 4: Discounts on bookings
2.5. Customer segments
Expedia Travel Company provides its products and services to customers that earn high
income. The company targets groups that like travelling, the business entrepreneurs, and
families. As indicated in figure 5 below, it is apparent that the travel company also targets
families that would like to enjoy from their ordinary and craving for vacations. The gateway
allows family members to benefit from exploring the world and unfamiliar locations.
Figure 5: target groups

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Source: https://www.expedia.com/vacation-rentals/
2.6. Branding and positioning
Expedia Travel Company has succeeded in distilling its brand to differentiate
itself from other competitors. The company has succeeded in creating a desirable image in the
minds of customers. The company uses symbols and slogans to create strong trust among
customers (Perrey & Riesenbeck 2016). Figure 6 below shows that Expedia positions itself as
one that offers high experience to tourists, high rating among guests, and one that offers
outstanding value.
Figure 6: branding and positioning
Source: https://www.expedia.com/collections
2.7. Current promotion and marketing
The current sales promotion of the company involves the use of premiums on
bookings. The direct response has also seen the company create accounts with several social
media accounts (Gorlevskaya, 2016; Brown, 2010). Figure 7 below shows Expedia Travel has
over 7 million people on Facebook that likes its page with more than 6.9 million followers. There
are 409,000 followers and 31,300 followings on Twitter with over 79,600 tweets. The Pinterest

Business Portfolio 8
has more than 49,000 followers with over 339,500 monthly viewers
(https://www.pinterest.com/Expedia/).
Figure 7: Social media marketing
Source: Compiled from different social media platforms
3. Recommended Future Campaigns
3.1. Direct Response
The company could adopt printing of brochures by the park authorities. This will help
clarify what is contained in the brochure. The agents dish out few brochures and advise the
tourists to print more from their websites (Ketter, Mansfeld and Avraham, 2016).
3.2. Mobile Solutions
There are various sites and items unsupported by the Facebook advertising platform. The
firm needs therefore to incorporate the lists and ads of such sections in special mobile solutions
to promote the sales and awareness.

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3.3. Awarded Blogs
The popularity and traffic on blogs is highly increasing over the past decade. There is
therefore need to develop marketing platforms on the sites of popular blogs or develop blogs that
would present the attractive features (Kallai, Bodnar and Bodnar, 2016).
3.4. Cinema
Expedia Travel could also adopt the use of cinema advertising. Wilson and Till (2013)
explain that adoption of theatre screen advertising has remained one of the long-term existing
away from home television. While most of the people are moving away from print media, radio,
and television, the medium of film has come to provide greater flexibility and features. Expedia
Travel does not use any of the advertising strategies to reach out to a large audience that are
never online throughout. Ewing, du Plessis and Foster (2011) explain that we now have
advanced cinema technology that has a capability of producing cinema advertising in Dolby
Stereo for an added focus. The strategy will ensure that the company produces high quality
presentations than the television. Such presentations will be improved resolution to attract the
attention of everyone passing on the streets, urban areas, and cinema halls to see. Johnson (2016)
explains that cinema advertising can become one of the effective tools to reach out to audience in
a wider geographical area. The strategy will reach out to families, individuals, corporates, as well
as groups.
4. Recommended New and Innovative Idea
Management needs to introduce surfing competitions as a new innovative product. A
majority of tourists will see the need to make annual subscriptions to come and participate in
surfing and deep-sea diving competition. While at the same time, a majority of customers will
enjoy making bookings to stay in the rental hotels.

Business Portfolio 10
References
Brown, E. (2010) Working the crowd: Social Media for business. British Informatics Society
Limited.
Ewing, M. T., du Plessis, E., & Foster, C. (2011) Cinema Advertising Re-Considered. Journal of
Advertising Research, 41(1), 78-85
Expedia (2018) Pinterest [Online]. Available at https://www.pinterest.com/Expedia/ [accessed on
8 June, 2018]
Expedia Travel (2018) Facebook account [Online]. Available at
https://web.facebook.com/expedia/?_rdc=1&_rdr [accessed on 8 June 2018]
Gorlevskaya, L. (2016) Building Effective Marketing Communications in Tourism. Studia
Commercialia Bratislavensia, 9(35), 252-265
Johnson, K. F. (2016) Cinema Advertising. Journal of Advertising 10, no. 4: 11-19
Kallai, K., Bodnar, E. S., & Bodnar, K. (2016) The marketing of hunting tourism through the
internet in Hungary. Agricultural Management, 18(3), 121-128.
Ketter, E., Mansfeld, Y., & Avraham, E. (2016) The role of marketing in tourism planning:
Overplay, underplay or interplay? Tourism (13327461), 64(2), 135-148.
Perrey, J & Riesenbeck H. (2016) Power brands: Measuring and managing brand success.
Wiley-VCH.
Travel & Tourism Industry Profile: Australia. (2016) Travel & Tourism Industry Profile:
Australia, 1-35.
Wilson, R. T., & Till, B. D. (2013) Recall of preshow cinema advertising: A message processing
perspective. Journal of Marketing Communications, 19(1), 1-21