Expedia Vs Agoda

阮清秀 – 企研碩一 106363120

選擇一個感興趣的產業之兩家企業，比較期近一年的策略差異

One of the companies is competing on Price and the other is competing on Innovation

Industry: Hospitality and tourism

Companies: Expedia and Agoda

Strategy comparison

1. Introduction of 2 companies

Both of them are hotel booking webpage, Online Travel Agency (OTA). OTA works as the bridge between traveler and accommodation supplier. OTA belongs to two sided market which the company has 2 types of customer: the guest who books the room and the hotel.

You put in your location, date of stay in the webpage, and they will appear different hotels with the price, description, reviews… for you to choose.

According to Skiff webpage in 2013, among most popular travel online booking sites, Expedia ranks 4th with 24.3 visits, Agoda ranked 5th with 22.6 Million visits.

1. Agoda: belongs to the Priceline group. Agoda was founded in 2005 in Thailand, the webpage is offered in 40 languages, mainly focuses on Asia market and is the leading site for Asia hotels.

1. Expedia: owned by the Expedia Inc. Expedia was establish in 2001 in the US, the webpage is functioned in 32 languages, it focuses mostly in US market and now is expecting to expand more to Asia.

1. Strategies of 2 companies

Both asks the guest to pay the fee directly to the website when they make the reservation. Once customer make the reservation, he is required to pay directly via bank card to the webpage.

However for Agoda, they give customer more payment options: they can pay the fee directly to the hotel when they check in. This service is actually provided by booking.com, another OTA with different model, so if guest chooses pay when arrival, the reservation is processed by booking.com. Nevertheless, the price of pay when arrival is higher, so actually agoda indirectly encourages their user to pay to them directly.

1. Membership system

Everyone with an email or phone number can sign up for being a member and enjoy the benefit, however the user’s reward program works differently in two booking pages.

Agoda: once register for an account, the user can enjoy the discount right away. Every time a reservation is made, the member receives a certain points which equal to an amount of money. She can use this money in the next reservation.

Expedia: once finish registering to be a member, the guest receives some points. Every time making a booking, user earns points. These points cannot be deducted from the payment. User needs to collect the points and redeem it to a free night.

For Agoda’s system, user gets the benefit right away after registration and can use the points every time they make the transaction, this way can attract more new customers quickly. For Expedia, customer gets the benefit until they reach a certain number of reservation cost, so it encourages user to spend more, this way emphasizes more on the long term customer relation.

1. Customer service

Both webpage has 24-hour customer service which offers in different language, mainly in English.

Agoda: they generally do not let user contact hotel directly, if customer or hotel wants to contact, they need to go through customer service, tell customer service the problem and the customer will contact the other side. They do not provide personal contact of the guest to the hotel and vice versa.