Problems Faced by Expedia
Quality management makes sure that a company, product or service is reliable. It is a set of strategies, procedure, and policies needed for planning and implementation in the organization (Bergman and Klefsjo, 2010). Expedia.com is one of the biggest online travel organizations globally with a wide-ranging brand collection that involves some of the worldwide leading online travel brands. This report explains problems faced by the company in regards to their provision of bookings and customer services. The report also identifies the right competencies and capabilities of the company to make their services quality better for the customers. The report also evaluates the impacts of different technique such as Kaizen and ISO on Expedia which could help the company to deliver consistent and viable quality management.
According to Burgess et al. (2011), the poor reviews on Tripadvisor in regarding to customer services and bookings affect the quality management of the company. The main problems faced by the company are explained as follows (Fu Tsang et al., 2010):
Economic downturn: According to Tribe (2015), the Company operates in a cyclical industry and a monetary downturn is a main risk. Travel expenses are sensitive to people and business related discretionary spending levels and tend to decrease or develop more slowly during monetary downturns. Diminish travel expenditures might reduce the requirements for company’s services, causing a reduction in revenue. Sovereign obligations and monetary problems in European countries, the shutdown of the United State government in the previous time, pressure over expanding the responsibility ceiling in United States are the cases that add to an uncertain economic environment affecting the organization.
Depend on metasearch websites: According to Christodoulidou et al. (2010), Expedia relies upon Google, Tripadvisor, Yahoo and other metasearch sites which attract the travelers by pay-per-click, showing marketing campaigns and create an activity for Expedia. These search engines could later estimated and encourage lesser movement for organization’s websites. In January 2014, organization shares fell after page rankings that are fallen by 25 percent for travel related inquiries on Google. Search metrics such as Google is fining the organization for the perverted links to Expedia.com that is posted on numerous travelers blogs and different sites.
Managing omnichannel experience: According to Verhoef et al. (2015), the rise of smart phones has broken the conventional customer travel, leaving a somewhat dispersed way to buy and an abudance to arrive. For Expedia, this Omni channels challenge is considerable to a greater degree than a reality. Mobile adaption in travels has been specifically high contrasted and different ventures, with about 33 percent of online business exchanges now available on mobile. Adding to this, a wealth of new advancements has erupted, including computerized bots, voice search, and virtual reality. In spite of the reality, these innovations have the capacity to help organizations to expel pains points from travel, Expedia has been slow in adoption.
Personalization: Personalization is a major issue in travel right now and in two ways. Initially, there is a larger requirement for customized experiences that are carefully fit travel is no longer exclusive to the luxury end of the market and has become a lot more accessible (Ip et al., 2011). Travelers need something exclusive that they can boast about at dinner parties with their friends, and the fast development of disruptors, such as AirBNB offering real, individual experience is driving Expedia to look past their customary offerings. Another concept is the personalization in marketing, specifically online where purchasers now expect a consistent booking experience depends on their own individual needs.
Measures were taken by Expedia to improve its quality
Increasing demand of online travel agents: According to Lee et al. (2013), the last difficult issue faced by Expedia is the rise in online travel agents in travel marketing and ignore the shift from the traditional block and mortar travel agencies to the web-based beasts like Expedia. In the year 2012, provider online sites responsible for 64 percent of web-based sales in comparison to 36 percent for online travels agents, and are expected to show 66 percent of online sales in 2015. For Expedia, this may result in less investment in on the ground sales team and more time spent ensuring product information is easily accessible by online feeds.
Competition level: Expedia’s accomplishments depends on its capacity its services and infrastructure to cater quickly developing customers trends and requirements while proceeding to enhance the execution, characteristics, and reliability of its services in response to competitive offerings and product offerings. The rise of alternatives frameworks such as smartphones and tablet computing gadgets and the rise of niche competitors who have the capability to improve products, services and techniques for such frameworks require new and expensive investment in technology. New developments in different territories, such as cloud computing and programming can also make it easy for competition in order to get entry in the market because of less technology cost.
Measures were taken by Expedia to improve its quality
According to Ye et al. (2011), quality improvement must be the objective of every business. The core of quality management is being capable to direct the business towards enhanced performance. Expedia has faced the issue of poor reviews in relating to the terms of customer service and bookings. In order to make their quality service better for their customers, various measures have taken by the company in order to improve its quality management which is explained as follows (Chiou et al., 2011):
Online presence: According to Kabbara (2016), the internet has given the modern customer with a portal to rapidly and effectively get information about a destination, and independently book all components of a trip online. Today, Expedia computers are assessing the guest reviews to know the customer viewpoint about the company services.
New accelerator program: Expedia conducts new accelerator program which provides a way for hotel properties to move their way up from page three to the main page of postings on Expedia.com and pay additional 10 percent commission over their ordinary payments. According to Lee et al. (2011), this accelerator program enables the hotelier to choose the promotion advancement tab and enter the dates the property needs to run the numbers offer in the Accelerator program. This program shows a pop-up which indicates the Expedia current property position and how much the position would improve base on proportion increases in the hotel’s commission payment.
Score card: According to Sigala (2010), the organization has a new instrument to help hoteliers use reviews in order to enhance quality. The instrument gives a score based on the feeling of traveler is communicating in the content. Expedia lets explorers and give appraisals for various parts of their stay, such as giving 0 to 5 rating on room cleanliness, service and staff, and hotel condition, but those ratings are not included in the in the sentiment analysis.
Enhance process efficiency: According to Ling et al. (2010), Expedia uses customer relationship management in order to enhance the efficiency by through data processing. The framework can store data about staff members, business partners, and booking. The company customer relationship management empowers business to investigate, opinions, and alter this information through a user-friendly interface. With a customer relationship management, the company no longer required to invest time trawling documents to find the data that business requires, as it can automatically keep records update.
Acquisition of Orbitz: The greatest move of Expedia is its acquisition of Orbitz, which is an effort to support its mobile phone transaction incomes. Recognizing the enhancement of gadgets on which travel buy are created that is from tablets to mobile phones through personal computers, the organization of the two giants is much more than the collection of the both companies’ incomes. This move of company mix the powers of travel business in order to provide more faster and more precise outcomes to the consumer, as information gets more and more complex today. Expedia began to create extensive use of information produced by feedback loops of customer and also make efforts to gather information which is more effective and profitable by choosing a few selected categories of data.
Improving customer value: Expedia especially concentrates its endeavors in understanding and enhancing customer lifetime value. Though it is a difficult task which considering many consumers who book through Expedia who do not always have an account on this website. The company has some item aspects which can create it tempting to concentrate more on exchanges than customers (Peppers and Rogers, 2016). The company invested significant time in establishing information collections, bunches and predictive models to identify which consumers are most likely to purchase. The company can find out the amount that company will spend to procure a customer on the first transaction, and which kinds of transactions or campaigns have the biggest chances of driving a second or next transaction. Customer lifetime value analysis also shows that the cost to drive future transactions decays among loyal customers. For this purpose, company establish and prepared a utility model, using ongoing valuing information from hoteliers and recorded customer information, to anticipate what might be most important to buyers.
Find the niche and sell an experience: Expedia determines the customer requirements and also concentrates on marketing strategies that will promote their services in the market. With the modern availability of the travel industry, the company provides the possibilities for travelers to book their trips by themselves with a click of a button via online and company also offer the added value of a travel operator to their customers which help them to organize the trips.
Evaluate the impact of Kaizen and ISO technique on Expedia
According to Munstermann (2014), quality improvement instruments are more concerned with altering one region of a framework, less with routine measuring against regulating benchmarks. The assessment of the major techniques of quality improvement which could have an effect on Expedia in terms of conveying consistent and efficient quality management is explained as follows (Goetsch and Davis, 2014):
Kaizen Technique: According to Guo and Harihara (2012), Kaizen is also known as consistent change and is considered as a long-term approach to work that systematically perceives to achieve little, incremental modifications in procedure to enhance efficiency and excellence. Kaizen technique can be applied to any type of work, yet it might be well-defined for being used in lean assembling and lean programming. The impact of Kaizen technique could enable Expedia to focus on the following factors in terms of delivering consistent and effective quality to their customers is as follows:
- The idea of Kaizen technique helps the Expedia to work as a team with the aim to enhance daily business procedure for improving quality. This technique provides a framework to channel the opportunities for growth which is identified by worker and then convert them into recognized changes that have a positive impact on the approach people execute and view their work.
- Enhancing business procedure which will increase product and service quality.Kaizen requires a formalized composition within the company, where team member’s proposition is assessed, executed, surveyed and perceived by their arrangement to the organization’s announced goals for continuous improvement.
- Choices must be created by using the real data as opposed to a strong opinion. Supervisors need to research issues themselves in order to accumulate data. By using the Kaizen technique, incorporate the participation of all collaborators in enhancing and developing the company in little, consistently, incremental advances that do not lose adequacy after some time.
Advantages: Arranging and isolating which is not required, for example, removing barriers in order to make work simple and protecting the gatherings of undesirable things.
Organizing items that are required and which will make the workflow easy.
Maintain high standards in the work environment and confirming that all the procedure has a standard.
Disadvantages: While consistent changes are a good way for an organization to work, and this business technique does brings with its own set of benefits as well. Trained the employees to work in a continuous improvement environment requires time and money, and it is a long procedure which can create barriers in accomplishing the company’s objective.
ISO Technique: According to Wu and Chen (2011), the ISO 9000 technique of quality management frameworks are created to support organizations and confirm that organization is able to cater the customer requirements and other stakeholders while meeting statutory and administrative prerequisites related to a item or service. This technique depends on various quality management standards including a solid customer base, the encouragement, and execution of senior authority and considered as procedure approach and continual improvement. The impact of ISO technique will help Expedia to make an effort to acquire this method for a non-development purpose which acquires less advantage from it, rather than those who perceive it for development reasons (Kim et al., 2011). This technique also provides more opportunity to customers to give their reviews on the quality services provided by the organization. The outcome of this technique represents that ISO 9000 affirmed organizations seeking a cost leadership strategy result in profit increase while seeking a marker separation strategy results in enhancing sales.
Advantages: Enhanced marketability Reduced operational expenses
Disadvantages: Funding for setting up the quality framework is lacking.
Proprietors and administrators do not have a satisfactory comprehension of the ISO 9000 affirmation process or of the quality measures themselves
Therefore, the impacts of these two techniques of quality improvement could have a positive impact on Expedia in terms of delivering consistent and effective quality services to their customers. With the help of Kaizen and ISO technique, Expedia can improve its quality management and offer other opportunities to their customers in booking their trips online.
Conclusion
From this report, it has been concluded that quality services play an important role in the developing the strong customer base towards company product and services. This report explains the quality management of Expedia which is an online travel company. The company facing various issues likes poor reviews on Tripadvisor relating to bookings and customer service. This report explains the major issues currently facing by a company which make their quality services ineffective. The report also shows the various measures taken by Expedia in order to overcome these issues and make their services creative and better for their customers. The two major techniques of quality improvement, such as Kaizen and ISO 9000, can have a positive impact if a company uses these techniques for the further services. These two techniques can provide various opportunities to the company to make their customer base strong and also delivering the effective quality to their customers.
References
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