Tag Archives for expedia.
Expedia just launched inside ChatGPT, letting you book hotels and flights directly in the chat. But when I asked the AI whether that’s actually a good idea, it warned me — “Don’t use it.”
Bilt Rewards Vice President Richard Kerr wrote up an in-depth explanation of travel portals. Bilt uses Expedia for members who want to redeem their points at 1.25 cents apiece towards paid travel, whether it’s hotel or airfare or other bookings.
American Express, Chase, Citi, and others have travel portals and it’s common to use a third-party ‘white label’ service like this.
Uber is run by the former CEO of Expedia (2005 – 2017). No wonder it’s become such a terrible experience for both riders and drivers.
Expedia itself saw a 20% increase in hotel bookings in the second quarter. Expedia Group overall, though? Just 10%. That says Hotels.com was flat or down in an environment where it should be rising. What’s different is that there’s no longer a strong incentive to use Hotels.com for members in the U.S. or U.K. where the new OneKey program has rolled out.
Savings on stays is the interesting play with Expedia’s OneKey Rewards, and the easiest way to earn status that yields that savings is by having one of their new credit cards from Wells Fargo.
While it can be useful for the average consumer to search flights with Expedia or the like, it’s not usually a good idea to buy travel from them unless they are able to construct complicated itineraries at a lower price than booking directly. Instead, find the flights you want and then go straight to the airline to buy your ticket.
Expedia spends a lot to acquire one-off customers. They’re realizing it can be cheaper to sell subsequent trips to people that have already purchased from them (loyalty matters) and they’ve gutted their loyalty program throughout the years.
Meanwhile if Accor is ‘early in’ with this partnership they may gain higher purchase likelihood from Expedia’s eyeballs than other chains.
Hotels.com does clearly say the rate is only ‘partially’ non-refundable. And 10% is partial, less than the whole (100%). No lies detected!
Luxury hotels are more likely to post fake reviews than cheaper properties. That appears to be because people deciding on price are less influenced by reviews, while a decision to drop $500 or more per night on a resort will be influenced by more subjective and experiential elements of a stay.
It used to be that hotels would post fake negative reviews of competitors. But they’ve shifted away from that and more towards posting more fake positive reviews of their own properties, as Airbnb has grown.
United Airlines has gone woke. Airlines are fighting over who can be the most environmentally-friendly. Delta even claimed to be carbon neutral before the pandemic, even though they literally own an oil refinery and most of it was dubious carbon offsets.
Expedia’s Chairman Barry Diller is bucking the trend dismissing ESG as virtue signaling.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
