Tag Archives for expedia.
Expedia Chairman Barry Diller called work from home “kind of stupid” as well as being “a crock.” He claims that ”sitting at a laptop computer at a dining room table” doesn’t lead to innovation.
Diller has been bashing his own employees, and blaming them for lack of innovation, efficiency and profitability even before work from home. Work from home is just the latest excuse for the Expedia boss.
Bilt has launched a travel portal so that – in addition to transferring points to partners like American, United, and Hyatt – Bilt Rewards members can book their preferred trip (whatever it is) and pay with points instead of cash.
Each point is valued at 1.25 cents apiece when spent this way. That beats most credit card portal values, and matches Chase with its Sapphire Preferred Card.
The New Orleans Saints had to find a new place to play their ‘home opener’ against the Green Bay Packers. They chose Jacksonville, Florida of all place. And it’s thanks in part to Expedia. The online travel agency site helped them figure out that this would be the toughest and most expensive city for Packers fans to get to.
Most people use sites like Expedia or Kayak to compare options because they don’t start off knowing they want to fly American Airlines or United. They find the schedule and price they’re looking for, and then book what looks best.
While it can be useful for the average consumer to search flights with Expedia or the like, it’s not actually a good idea to buy travel from them unless they are able to construct complicated itineraries at a lower price than booking directly. These two tweets show why.
The cheapest tickets on United are a worse value than similar fares on Delta and Southwest (especially) but even American too. Right now most passengers aren’t well-informed and disproportionately book through sites like Expedia – and as a result don’t know that they’re getting less value, because these sites don’t tell them. Online booking sites don’t serve the people who are ostensibly their customers.
As if China travel wasn’t already burdened enough by coronavirus fears, a concomitant drop in demand, and airlines cancelling flights, a major online travel agency group won’t even sell tickets in or out of China to passengers looking to buy them.
Expedia is about the last travel company to do anything pro-consumer and yet with its muscle it could come late into the game and make a real difference.
We’ve been waiting for Google to become more aggressive in the travel space for years finally doing something to disrupt online travel booking. For a long time they would help you plan, find deals, and send you to Expedia or Priceline to book.
Now Expedia and others complain that Google doesn’t just send business along to them, but consumers are now the ones who benefit.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
As soon as I saw the story of the man who was charged $4600 for a one night stay at a Holiday Inn my immediate reaction was… Expedia.
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 »
