While we were at AHICE, Expedia Group was debuting a three-tiered strategy to redefine its place in travel from its EXPLORE22 partner conference in Las Vegas.
The announcements included ‘Expedia Group™ Open World’ – a new technology platform to power the industry. The reimagined marketplace rewards partners for delivering great traveller experiences and focuses on developing technology, which provides the right information to increase booking confidence.
Open World is a purpose-built technology platform created for partners of all sizes. It will help hotels leverage and configure products and services needed to succeed in the travel ecosystem. The platform delivers an entire ecommerce suite with building blocks like payments, fraud, conversations, and service, that anyone can use to accelerate, enhance, or even enter the travel business more effectively.
Expedia Group also announced a reimagined marketplace that puts traveller experience at its core. Using a breadth of data signals, including traveller reviews, customer service interactions and more, each hotel property will receive a new guest experience score. This score will directly impact the search and sort factors that drive visibility in Expedia Group’s marketplace algorithm. Partners will receive personalised insights and actionable recommendations to improve their scores in line with traveller expectations. Incentivising partners to deliver better experiences by shifting more bookings to those who score well, Expedia Group expects to create better connections between hotels and travellers for greater traveller long-term loyalty for all. Hotel partners can see their guest experience score by logging into Expedia Group Partner Central.
Alongside these major announcements, Expedia Group has introduced two new features designed to add confidence and trust to the hotel shopping and booking experience.
- Trip Boards: Expedia Group is extending Trip Boards to more product lines. Trip Boards will serve as a homebase for all things trip related, from hotels, to activities, flights and more, helping to simplify collaboration with travel companions.
- Smart shopping: Making it easier for travellers to compare and choose between offers, Expedia Group will now surface a wider range of options earlier and all in one place. For hotels, this includes room attributes, categories, and upgrade opportunities.
To experience key EXPLORE 2022 sessions and understand how these announcements benefit your business, watch them on demand* via https://ondemand.exploreexpediagroup.com/