Expedia Chief Expects Facebook to Emerge as the Competition
Jeff Edwards May 23, 2016
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Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told Bloomberg that he anticipates that Facebook will become a major player in the highly competitive business of online travel booking.
Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says that his company is preparing for the entry of a major new player in the already crowded field of online travel booking sites. Khosrowshahi predicts that an industry already shaken up by Google’s entry into the market as a serious alternative to sites like Expedia, Priceline and Bookit.com will soon have to deal with social media giant Facebook as a formidable new source of competition.
The head of one of the largest online travel companies in the world believes that Facebook’s move to make their site more friendly for e-commerce will naturally capture a significant share of the online travel booking market. Google has for some time now allowed users to book trips directly through the popular search engine rather than going to third party booking sites such as Expedia. Industry insiders expect Facebook to follow a similar model as it moves to expand its e-commerce reach.
“We do think that travel is such a significant portion of e-commerce that Facebook will have a travel-specific product,” Khosrowshahi told Bloomberg’s Gerrit De Vynck. “Social as a channel, Facebook as a channel, none of us have quite figured it out. If there’s a player that figures out social in a big-scale way, that’s a player that is going to steal share, over us and the other traditional players.”
Social media users currently have few options for booking trips via Facebook, but that is slowly changing. Facebook has started to allow some users to save payment information in their social media profiles and travel agencies can already target and offer tailored itineraries to users who have mentioned specific destinations in their posts.
[Photo: Getty]
