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Site Features:
Great content and fare search provided by the ESP platform.
Airline tickets, hotels, packages, destination information, and
rental cars. You can also purchase retail cruises
from NLG.
Site Report:
Expedia is the leader in branded online travel services.
The website, located at expedia.com (and other top level domains for all countries, including expedia.co.uk, expedia.de, expedia.ca, etc) offers one-stop travel shopping and reservation services, and reliable, real-time access to schedule, pricing, and availability information for airlines, hotels, rental cars and cruises.
Expedia is proud of their underlying technology infrastructure. The website was launched in 1996 and quickly became one of the most visited sites online. Expedia was built by the folks at Microsoft, and although the business soon became a robust one, the real reason this site was launched was to prove that a Microsoft product was able to handle large scale volume. As it turns out, SQL server was scaleable. And so was Expedia.
Expedia was able to acquire and build some excellent businesses over the years. In 1999, the service launched a priceline-type service called Flight Price Matcher. In the same year, they purchased Travelscape.com in order to help them compete in the Las Vegas market. In 2001, Expedia produced WWTE, the World Wide Travel Exchange - one of the leaders in private label travel technology.
Last year the folks at Expedia launched a new technology initiative designed to help consumers find the lowest fares online. Expedia’s award-winning Expert Searching and Pricing (ESP) technology delivers the most comprehensive flight options available online. ESP also allows customers to dynamically build complete trips that combine flights and other travel products.
And through other purchases, Expedia operates Classic Custom Vacations, a leading distributor of premiere vacation packages to destinations such as Hawaii, Mexico, Europe and the Caribbean; and Expedia Corporate Travel, a full-service corporate travel agency.
The site is content heavy, but easy to use. If that last sentence sounds tricky, that's because it is. The folks behind this site are good technologists, but over the years, they've become good marketers, too. The tabbed format makes it easy to access all the products that Expedia offers -- air, hotel, rental cars, etc. If you use the hotels product, you can see the interface expertise the company has. The path offers excellent mapping technology, descriptions and pictures of hotels and attractions, but instead of feeling overwhelmed, it helps you transact. The Travelsites Editors know that it's hard to put good information in front of consumers without distracting them. Expedia does it, and does it well.
Fare information is available for hundreds of airlines and thousands of hotels around the world. Helpfully, Expedia publishes some information about how best to use their service - and the Travelsites team is only too happy to summarize for you. Here goes:
Buy roundtrip tickets.
Use Fare Compare.
Purchase early.
Spend a Saturday night at your destination.
Consider alternative airports.
Check fares on all airlines.
Have your frequent flyer membership numbers on hand when you shop. Follow the
rules and you could find a great bargain at Expedia.com!
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