Managing Quality in Expedia: Challenges, Strategies, and Techniques

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Expedia's quality management, addressing the challenges the company faces, such as economic downturns, reliance on metasearch websites, managing omnichannel experiences, personalization issues, and increasing competition from online travel agents. It explores the measures Expedia has taken to improve its quality, including online presence enhancements, new accelerator programs, scorecard implementations, process efficiency improvements, and strategic acquisitions like Orbitz. The report also examines Expedia's efforts to enhance customer value and find its niche in the market. Furthermore, it evaluates the impact of quality improvement techniques, particularly Kaizen and ISO, on Expedia's ability to deliver consistent and efficient quality management, offering insights into how these techniques can be applied to improve customer satisfaction and business performance in the competitive travel industry.

RUNNING HEAD: Managing quality in Expedia
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Managing Quality in Expedia

Managing quality in Expedia 2
Executive Summary
Quality assumes a critical part of fulfilling customer requirements and retaining their loyalty.
This report represents the quality management of Expedia Company. Currently, the organization
has been receiving many poor reviews for their provision of customer service and bookings. The
report explains the various challenges faced by the company currently. The report also discusses
the appropriate abilities and competencies of the company in order to overcome the issues and
make their quality services better for the customers. The report also evaluates the influences of
Kaizen and ISO approaches on Expedia in terms of delivering the effective and efficient quality
management.

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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................4
Problems faced by Expedia..........................................................................................................................4
Economic downturn................................................................................................................................4
Depend on metasearch websites............................................................................................................4
Managing omnichannel experience.........................................................................................................5
Personalization........................................................................................................................................5
Increasing demand for online travel agents............................................................................................5
Competition level....................................................................................................................................5
Measures were taken by Expedia to improve its quality.............................................................................6
Online presence.......................................................................................................................................6
New accelerator program........................................................................................................................6
Scorecard.................................................................................................................................................6
Enhance process efficiency......................................................................................................................7
Acquisition of Orbitz................................................................................................................................7
Improving customer value.......................................................................................................................7
Find the niche and sell an experience.........................................................................................................8
Evaluate the impact of Kaizen and ISO technique on Expedia.....................................................................8
Kaizen Technique.....................................................................................................................................8
ISO Technique..........................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................10
References.................................................................................................................................................11

Managing quality in Expedia 4
Introduction
Quality management makes sure that a company, product or service is reliable. It is a set of
strategies, procedure, and policies needed for planning and implementation in the organization
(Bergman and Klefsjo, 2010). Expedia.com is one of the biggest online travel organizations
globally with a wide-ranging brand collection that involves some of the worldwide leading
online travel brands. This report explains problems faced by the company in regards to their
provision of bookings and customer services. The report also identifies the right competencies
and capabilities of the company to make their services quality better for the customers. The
report also evaluates the impacts of different technique such as Kaizen and ISO on Expedia
which could help the company to deliver consistent and viable quality management.
Problems faced by Expedia
According to Burgess et al. (2011), the poor reviews on Tripadvisor in regarding to customer
services and bookings affect the quality management of the company. The main problems faced
by the company are explained as follows (Fu Tsang et al., 2010):
Economic downturn: According to Tribe (2015), the Company operates in a cyclical
industry and a monetary downturn is a main risk. Travel expenses are sensitive to people and
business related discretionary spending levels and tend to decrease or develop more slowly
during monetary downturns. Diminish travel expenditures might reduce the requirements for
company’s services, causing a reduction in revenue. Sovereign obligations and monetary
problems in European countries, the shutdown of the United State government in the previous
time, pressure over expanding the responsibility ceiling in United States are the cases that add to
an uncertain economic environment affecting the organization.
Depend on metasearch websites: According to Christodoulidou et al. (2010), Expedia
relies upon Google, Tripadvisor, Yahoo and other metasearch sites which attract the travelers by
pay-per-click, showing marketing campaigns and create an activity for Expedia. These search
engines could later estimated and encourage lesser movement for organization's websites. In
January 2014, organization shares fell after page rankings that are fallen by 25 percent for travel

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related inquiries on Google. Search metrics such as Google is fining the organization for the
perverted links to Expedia.com that is posted on numerous travelers blogs and different sites.
Managing omnichannel experience: According to Verhoef et al. (2015), the rise of smart
phones has broken the conventional customer travel, leaving a somewhat dispersed way to buy
and an abudance to arrive. For Expedia, this Omni channels challenge is considerable to a greater
degree than a reality. Mobile adaption in travels has been specifically high contrasted and
different ventures, with about 33 percent of online business exchanges now available on mobile.
Adding to this, a wealth of new advancements has erupted, including computerized bots, voice
search, and virtual reality. In spite of the reality, these innovations have the capacity to help
organizations to expel pains points from travel, Expedia has been slow in adoption.
Personalization: Personalization is a major issue in travel right now and in two ways.
Initially, there is a larger requirement for customized experiences that are carefully fit travel is no
longer exclusive to the luxury end of the market and has become a lot more accessible (Ip et al.,
2011). Travelers need something exclusive that they can boast about at dinner parties with their
friends, and the fast development of disruptors, such as AirBNB offering real, individual
experience is driving Expedia to look past their customary offerings. Another concept is the
personalization in marketing, specifically online where purchasers now expect a consistent
booking experience depends on their own individual needs.
Increasing demand of online travel agents: According to Lee et al. (2013), the last
difficult issue faced by Expedia is the rise in online travel agents in travel marketing and ignore
the shift from the traditional block and mortar travel agencies to the web-based beasts like
Expedia. In the year 2012, provider online sites responsible for 64 percent of web-based sales in
comparison to 36 percent for online travels agents, and are expected to show 66 percent of online
sales in 2015. For Expedia, this may result in less investment in on the ground sales team and
more time spent ensuring product information is easily accessible by online feeds.
Competition level: Expedia’s accomplishments depends on its capacity its services and
infrastructure to cater quickly developing customers trends and requirements while proceeding to
enhance the execution, characteristics, and reliability of its services in response to competitive
offerings and product offerings. The rise of alternatives frameworks such as smartphones and

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tablet computing gadgets and the rise of niche competitors who have the capability to improve
products, services and techniques for such frameworks require new and expensive investment in
technology. New developments in different territories, such as cloud computing and
programming can also make it easy for competition in order to get entry in the market because of
less technology cost.
Measures were taken by Expedia to improve its quality
According to Ye et al. (2011), quality improvement must be the objective of every business. The
core of quality management is being capable to direct the business towards enhanced
performance. Expedia has faced the issue of poor reviews in relating to the terms of customer
service and bookings. In order to make their quality service better for their customers, various
measures have taken by the company in order to improve its quality management which is
explained as follows (Chiou et al., 2011):
Online presence: According to Kabbara (2016), the internet has given the modern customer
with a portal to rapidly and effectively get information about a destination, and independently
book all components of a trip online. Today, Expedia computers are assessing the guest reviews
to know the customer viewpoint about the company services.
New accelerator program: Expedia conducts new accelerator program which provides a
way for hotel properties to move their way up from page three to the main page of postings on
Expedia.com and pay additional 10 percent commission over their ordinary payments. According
to Lee et al. (2011), this accelerator program enables the hotelier to choose the promotion
advancement tab and enter the dates the property needs to run the numbers offer in the
Accelerator program. This program shows a pop-up which indicates the Expedia current property
position and how much the position would improve base on proportion increases in the hotel’s
commission payment.
Score card: According to Sigala (2010), the organization has a new instrument to help
hoteliers use reviews in order to enhance quality. The instrument gives a score based on the
feeling of traveler is communicating in the content. Expedia lets explorers and give appraisals for

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various parts of their stay, such as giving 0 to 5 rating on room cleanliness, service and staff, and
hotel condition, but those ratings are not included in the in the sentiment analysis.
Enhance process efficiency: According to Ling et al. (2010), Expedia uses customer
relationship management in order to enhance the efficiency by through data processing. The
framework can store data about staff members, business partners, and booking. The company
customer relationship management empowers business to investigate, opinions, and alter this
information through a user-friendly interface. With a customer relationship management, the
company no longer required to invest time trawling documents to find the data that business
requires, as it can automatically keep records update.
Acquisition of Orbitz: The greatest move of Expedia is its acquisition of Orbitz, which is an
effort to support its mobile phone transaction incomes. Recognizing the enhancement of gadgets
on which travel buy are created that is from tablets to mobile phones through personal
computers, the organization of the two giants is much more than the collection of the both
companies' incomes. This move of company mix the powers of travel business in order to
provide more faster and more precise outcomes to the consumer, as information gets more and
more complex today. Expedia began to create extensive use of information produced by
feedback loops of customer and also make efforts to gather information which is more effective
and profitable by choosing a few selected categories of data.
Improving customer value: Expedia especially concentrates its endeavors in understanding
and enhancing customer lifetime value. Though it is a difficult task which considering many
consumers who book through Expedia who do not always have an account on this website. The
company has some item aspects which can create it tempting to concentrate more on exchanges
than customers (Peppers and Rogers, 2016). The company invested significant time in
establishing information collections, bunches and predictive models to identify which consumers
are most likely to purchase. The company can find out the amount that company will spend to
procure a customer on the first transaction, and which kinds of transactions or campaigns have
the biggest chances of driving a second or next transaction. Customer lifetime value analysis also
shows that the cost to drive future transactions decays among loyal customers. For this purpose,
company establish and prepared a utility model, using ongoing valuing information from

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hoteliers and recorded customer information, to anticipate what might be most important to
buyers.
Find the niche and sell an experience: Expedia determines the customer
requirements and also concentrates on marketing strategies that will promote their services in the
market. With the modern availability of the travel industry, the company provides the
possibilities for travelers to book their trips by themselves with a click of a button via online and
company also offer the added value of a travel operator to their customers which help them to
organize the trips.
Evaluate the impact of Kaizen and ISO technique on Expedia
According to Munstermann (2014), quality improvement instruments are more concerned with
altering one region of a framework, less with routine measuring against regulating benchmarks.
The assessment of the major techniques of quality improvement which could have an effect on
Expedia in terms of conveying consistent and efficient quality management is explained as
follows (Goetsch and Davis, 2014):
Kaizen Technique: According to Guo and Harihara (2012), Kaizen is also known as
consistent change and is considered as a long-term approach to work that systematically
perceives to achieve little, incremental modifications in procedure to enhance efficiency and
excellence. Kaizen technique can be applied to any type of work, yet it might be well-defined for
being used in lean assembling and lean programming. The impact of Kaizen technique could
enable Expedia to focus on the following factors in terms of delivering consistent and effective
quality to their customers is as follows:
 The idea of Kaizen technique helps the Expedia to work as a team with the aim to
enhance daily business procedure for improving quality. This technique provides a
framework to channel the opportunities for growth which is identified by worker and then
convert them into recognized changes that have a positive impact on the approach people
execute and view their work.
 Enhancing business procedure which will increase product and service quality. Kaizen
requires a formalized composition within the company, where team member’s

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proposition is assessed, executed, surveyed and perceived by their arrangement to the
organization's announced goals for continuous improvement.
 Choices must be created by using the real data as opposed to a strong opinion.
Supervisors need to research issues themselves in order to accumulate data. By using the
Kaizen technique, incorporate the participation of all collaborators in enhancing and
developing the company in little, consistently, incremental advances that do not lose
adequacy after some time.
Advantages: Arranging and isolating which is not required, for example, removing barriers
in order to make work simple and protecting the gatherings of undesirable things.
Organizing items that are required and which will make the workflow easy.
Maintain high standards in the work environment and confirming that all the procedure has a
standard.
Disadvantages: While consistent changes are a good way for an organization to work, and
this business technique does brings with its own set of benefits as well. Trained the employees to
work in a continuous improvement environment requires time and money, and it is a long
procedure which can create barriers in accomplishing the company’s objective.
ISO Technique: According to Wu and Chen (2011), the ISO 9000 technique of quality
management frameworks are created to support organizations and confirm that organization is
able to cater the customer requirements and other stakeholders while meeting statutory and
administrative prerequisites related to a item or service. This technique depends on various
quality management standards including a solid customer base, the encouragement, and
execution of senior authority and considered as procedure approach and continual improvement.
The impact of ISO technique will help Expedia to make an effort to acquire this method for a
non-development purpose which acquires less advantage from it, rather than those who perceive
it for development reasons (Kim et al., 2011). This technique also provides more opportunity to
customers to give their reviews on the quality services provided by the organization. The
outcome of this technique represents that ISO 9000 affirmed organizations seeking a cost
leadership strategy result in profit increase while seeking a marker separation strategy results in
enhancing sales.

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Advantages: Enhanced marketability
Reduced operational expenses
Disadvantages: Funding for setting up the quality framework is lacking.
Proprietors and administrators do not have a satisfactory comprehension of the ISO 9000
affirmation process or of the quality measures themselves
Therefore, the impacts of these two techniques of quality improvement could have a positive
impact on Expedia in terms of delivering consistent and effective quality services to their
customers. With the help of Kaizen and ISO technique, Expedia can improve its quality
management and offer other opportunities to their customers in booking their trips online.
Conclusion
From this report, it has been concluded that quality services play an important role in the
developing the strong customer base towards company product and services. This report explains
the quality management of Expedia which is an online travel company. The company facing
various issues likes poor reviews on Tripadvisor relating to bookings and customer service. This
report explains the major issues currently facing by a company which make their quality services
ineffective. The report also shows the various measures taken by Expedia in order to overcome
these issues and make their services creative and better for their customers. The two major
techniques of quality improvement, such as Kaizen and ISO 9000, can have a positive impact if a
company uses these techniques for the further services. These two techniques can provide
various opportunities to the company to make their customer base strong and also delivering the
effective quality to their customers.

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