Aug. 18–Big data analytics, artificial intelligence and natural language processing technology have been adopted by online hotel booking service Expedia to boost revenue for hoteliers and make it more convenient for users.
"The online hotel booking business has been growing rapidly every year because of the use of smartphones and availability of high-speed internet," said Pimpawee Nopakitgumjorn, marketing management director of Expedia Thailand Ltd.
The site received 600 million visits per month globally in 2016, compared with 450 million visits in 2015.
Mobile use has been increasing, accounting for one-third of visits last year and one-fourth of total transactions globally.
Mrs Pimpawee said hoteliers will shift from hotel occupancy rates and pricing wars to focus on revenue management to increase their margin.
To serve the needs of hoteliers, Expedia launched a new feature called Rev+, which are analytic revenue management tools as part of Expedia Partner Central (EPC).
EPC is a partner portal that helps hotels manage their properties and rates. Rev+ will aggregate price of hotel rivals automated to hotel managers, to use for planning price strategies.
Previously, the price comparisons were done manually by hotel staff which take about one to three hours a day, but this new automated tool enables hotels to manage their price strategy in seconds.
"Normally, less than 15% of hotels can afford revenue management software because of its high price but we offer the tool free of charge to our hotel partners," Mrs Pimpawee said.
In addition, artificial intelligence will play a more important role in making people's daily life more convenient. In the US, Expedia customers can ask voice-activated personal assistant Amazon Alexa about flight reservations and booking a car rental.
Mrs Pimpawee said in Thailand, the company will expand more hotelier partners in secondary cities not just main cities to have small hotels expose the global market.
Expedia has 14,891 hotelier partners in Thailand, one of its fastest growing markets in Southeast Asia. Besides flights and car rental, it plans to expand to package tour booking.
Moreover, Expedia will integrate HomeAway Inc, a vacation rental site which it acquired at the end of 2015 to compete with Airbnb Inc. The company is in the process of integrating HomeAway with its local office here.
Mrs Pimpawee said Japan, the US, Singapore, and Australia had the highest number of citizens visiting Thailand.
Expedia global revenue in 2016 reached US$72 billion, and it spent US$1.2 billion in research and development.
