LAS VEGAS, Nov. 13, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Technology can
improve travel experiences by reducing pain points and stressors
along the journey. Today, Expedia Group and business strategy
Firm Magid released the Online Travel Friction
Index1, finding travelers want suppliers to offer a
seamless travel experience, and to quickly and effectively handle
any challenge during their travels. The research is aligned with
Expedia Group's priority focus to unleash the power of its platform
to build out traveler and partner solutions that can help knock
down the barriers to travel, making it easier, more enjoyable, more
attainable, more accessible and in doing so, ultimately bring the
world within reach for billions of people around the globe.
What is a Frictionless Travel Experience?
Removing travel friction requires a deep understanding of
customer pain points. Expedia Group's Innovation Lab tests new
products continuously, leveraging advanced technologies including
artificial intelligence and machine learning, eye tracking and face
reader technology to understand travelers' focus on a web page and
the emotions they experience while booking travel.
These tests recently uncovered the attributes travelers value
the most that provide an easy-to-use, or frictionless online
booking experience. Friction reduction occurs through the creation
of extensive end-to-end user experience research, highly efficient
coordinated processes, iterative product development, and obsession
with customer and partner centricity.
The Online Travel Friction Index research identified key factors
that reduce traveler friction through a 'friction reduction index;'
a weighted average numerical score rating over 15 experience
attributes that nearly 850 online travel users, ages 18-55, used to
rate their experiences related to research, shopping and booking of
travel products on various travel websites. Results from this
research identified the top five most impactful friction reduction
attributes as:
- An easily navigable booking website
- Inventory that is the best value
- Ability to filter and sort a specific room type
- Option to redeem special offers
- Ability to quickly filter and sort specific hotel location
criteria
Expedia Group brands consistently ranked higher in all five
areas than other OTAs or branded chain sites that were included in
the research. Expedia Group is also rated at least as well as, if
not significantly higher, than hotel direct booking sites on every
attribute in the 'friction reduction' index.
Friction Reduction
Index Score Results
|
Expedia
Group
|
816
|
Other OTAs
|
799
|
Hotel Direct
Sites
|
792
|
Meta Sites
|
788
|
Expedia Group's two-sided platform approach meets customer
demands while simultaneously building innovative technology
solutions, and infrastructure for its partners. These tools include
examples such as white label packages that offer hotel partners
better website monetization by integrating air and car bookings
into their branded sites.
In 2018, Expedia Group spent more than $1.6 billion in technology, with a focus on
making its platform seamless for both partners and travelers.
Expedia Group's massive efforts and investment in research and
development over this decade have resulted in significant benefits
for both travelers and partners, including reduction in
distribution costs.
"Expedia Group is focused on connecting the world, by enabling
discovery, search and booking of flights, hotels, transportation
and activities - in a low stress, low friction manner," said
Cyril Ranque, Group President of the
Travel Partners Group, Expedia Group. "Our technology-first
platform is dedicated to providing a one-stop, easy and convenient
experience for travelers to discover and book their trip with all
the information they need to make the best and most informed
selection. While we are obsessed with customer centricity, it also
means a laser focus on partner success including helping our
partners maximize productivity, visibility, conversion, revenue,
and delivering to them the tools and experiences that they want and
need."
Removing Partner Friction
Today, Expedia Group's partners' and suppliers' expectations on
speed of service, and efficiency of processes are higher than ever
before.
Expedia Group's platform solves partner pain points through
different tools, such as the new Partner Central Chatbot, powered
by the next generation of the company's AI Lab's Centralized
Conversational Artificial Intelligence Platform (CCAIP)
architecture. This chatbot is a virtual assistant experience
providing contextual help and support to partners.
Personalized opportunities for partners generated by a new
recommendation engine driven by dozens of Machine Learning
algorithms intertwined together. This central intelligence
computes, organizes, and passes revenue opportunities to partners,
constantly evaluating the state of each partner to identify
potential actions they can take and the return reward in doing so.
Currently, this engine is generating 2.5 million recommendations
and will continue to evolve to be more precise.
Removing Traveler Friction
This week, Brand Expedia announced the launch of a trip
assistance function on the app, that will alert the hotel a
traveler will be checking in, if the traveler is experiencing a
flight delay of 8+ hours, regardless of where the flight was
booked. Brand Expedia is also piloting a shuttle tracking
technology program built by Track My Shuttle into the Expedia App,
allowing hotel guests to see exactly where to find shuttle pickup
for their hotel, and follow along with a live route map.
Egencia, Expedia Group's corporate travel brand is creating
a frictionless booking experience for business travelers by tapping
into powerful algorithms and applied machine learning. The business
travel management company recently launched Smart Mix, a feature
that intelligently analyzes data and complex scenarios, factoring
in the personal preferences of each traveler and their company's
travel policy to deliver smarter search results out of hundreds of
hotel and flight options. This week, Egencia announced the number
of flights selected in the top ten North American search results
improved by 13 percent, since Smart Mix for air was launched this
summer. Smart Mix for hotel has helped Egencia customers save
hundreds of thousands of dollars by optimizing search and sort
results, estimating that customers could save over a million
dollars by mid 2020 through the service.
The conversations platform is a perfect example of how Expedia
Group is removing friction for both travelers and partners. One
feature of the platform is the virtual agent (bot) which seamlessly
offers self-service experiences, all dynamically supported and
altered by artificial intelligence/machine learning through a
configuration console, resulting in reduced effort and quicker
process for making changes to bookings or completing queries. It is
currently being used by Expedia Group agents and partner agents,
reducing their cognitive load, delivering operational efficiencies
and improving satisfaction. The overall travel experience is
elevated.
About Expedia Group
Expedia Group is the world's travel platform. We help knock down
the barriers to travel, making it easier, more enjoyable, more
attainable and more accessible. We are here to bring the world
within reach for customers and partners around the globe. We
leverage our platform and technology capabilities across an
extensive portfolio of businesses and brands to orchestrate the
movement of people and the delivery of travel experiences on both a
local and global basis. Our family of travel brands includes: Brand
Expedia®, Hotels.com®, Expedia® Partner Solutions, Vrbo®, Egencia®,
trivago®, HomeAway®, Orbitz®, Travelocity®, Hotwire®, Wotif®,
ebookers®, CheapTickets®, Expedia Group™ Media Solutions, Expedia
Local Expert®, CarRentals.com™, Expedia® CruiseShipCenters®,
Classic Vacations®, Traveldoo®, VacationRentals.com and
SilverRail™. For more information,
visit www.expediagroup.com.
© 2019 Expedia, Inc. All rights reserved. Trademarks and logos
are the property of their respective owners. CST: 2029030-50
1 Expedia Group and Magid established an online
study of 847 travelers between the ages of 18-55 from the United States and United Kingdom. Respondents must have booked
at least one hotel stay using any OTA (online travel agency) within
the past year. An index ranging from 100 (most friction) to 1000
(least friction) was created from a comprehensive list of weighted
attributes using a Partial Least Squares regression model.
View original content to download
multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/research-shows-reducing-friction-matters-expedia-group-prioritizes-for-travelers-and-partners-300957356.html
SOURCE Expedia Group