Q: Since taking over as Expedia Asia Pacific managing director in November 2009, what have your priorities been?

My first priority was getting to understand the business that has been built here over the last five years. Expedia has built strong businesses in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and has started to grow in India, and it was important to hear about what was working, and build upon it.

The next most important area I have spent time on is working out our plans for how we can participate more fully in the APAC market, across the region, and developing a broader range of product lines. Expedia has always strived to bring the world the best selection of great value products with simple and intuitive websites, backed up by call centers and great customer service; and it was important to spend time identifying the next best opportunities to do that in across APAC.

Q: What’s the business outlook this year? Last year, most OTAs across the region enjoyed higher than average growth due to the rate environment. How did Expedia APAC do last year and do you expect this uptrend to continue?

I think all of the online travel space had a relatively good 2009 in comparison with the broader travel industry, as consumers continued migrating online. This more than offset the negative impacts of a slowing economy across the region.

Looking forward, I think we’ll see OTAs in general, and Expedia specifically, continue to benefit from that strong migration online. APAC as a region still has the biggest opportunity here, and even more online countries like Singapore or Australia, are still only in the mid-20s in terms of online penetration, versus 35-40% in the US and Western Europe.

Q: Of the four branded sites – Australia, India, Japan and New Zealand – which do you expect highest growth from? And which will be a challenge?

Over the longer run I would expect India to deliver the highest growth as the market benefits not only from the migration online, but also a fast growing travel population, and the build out of domestic travel infrastructure.

In the shorter run though, I expect that Australia will continue to grow extremely quickly as we benefit from the last few years efforts in improving our supply access in that market, which is now paying off with triple-digit growth in domestic travel.

Q: India – what impact has Travelocity’s acquisition of Travelguru had on Expedia in this market?

We haven’t noticed any significant impact. The online hotel market in India is only now beginning to coalesce a little, and we expect many more changes in the years ahead.

Q: Given your past role as director, strategy and customer insights, what customer insights have you gleaned into the region? Is customer behaviour in Asia Pacific considerably different from North America and Europe? And what differences are there in customer behaviour between say Australia and Hong Kong?

There are some pretty universal truths in travel – travelers want the best value; simple to use sites; and customer service they can trust. In some cases these things mean slightly different things in different regions, and particularly in different countries within APAC.

One area that is a universal customer behavior, is the dislike of unjustified air fees. Their removal was warmly welcomed in Australia, as it was warmly welcomed in the US. An example of some difference is in the website experience, redesigns that have worked on many of our other websites, such as streamlining the hotel search results to make it easier to move to the hotel selection step, have had the opposite effect in say Japan, where consumers have indicated that they prefer to spend more time in the search results, reviewing individual rate plan prices, before they move further down the path to their hotel selection.

Between Australia and Hong Kong I think the biggest difference is that many more Hong Kong travelers still rely on traditional street-front travel agents, rather than shopping online for travel. It’s up to companies like ourselves to earn those travelers trust over time.

Q: Have you seen particular shifts in customer behaviour as a result of the global financial crisis last year? How are people behaving differently online?

I think travelers behavior tends to move in two waves. At first leisure travelers quickly react to events like the global financial crisis, and change their travel plans, perhaps searching more for travel closer to home (but not generally shelving their travel plans completely). At the same time business travel pulls back much more dramatically, creating excess inventory in the air and at many hotels. Then in a second wave of reaction, travel suppliers begin offering some great deals on their newly opened up inventory, and we saw travelers quickly snapping these up as they were easily surfaced through more dynamic online distribution channels such as ourselves.

Q: How do you see the interplay between search, social search and social media – which is getting more important and in what channel will Expedia be investing in more this year?

I think it’s very exciting to think about social search and social media, and inevitably, at some point a means to harness the energy these channels creates as individual channels in their own right will evolve, but for now nothing beats search!

Having said that, the power of social media and social search in reinforcing search and other channels is undisputed as the proliferation of online travel players creates noise and doubt in consumers’ minds, and the recommendation or introduction of a friend or social group can drastically speed up the trust building process.

Q: Given these customer insights, what will Expedia Asia Pacific be doing differently this year – how will it be evolving its business model?

We will be focusing on three things: 1) improving travelers awareness of Expedia, and trust in everything we do across the region; 2) developing new distribution channels, whether these be new markets, partnerships or technologies; and 3) making our sites easier and easier to use, and tailoring that to each of the markets we work in.

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