Expedia Inc. launched a hotel booking site
for consumers in Japan, targeting the outbound market.
The new Expedia
Japan Web site, at www.expedia.co.jp, offers inventory from 30,000
properties around the world and is supported by Japanese-language
telephone and e-mail customer service.
Site features
include professional reviews, traveler ratings, Expedia star
ratings and virtual tours of hotel rooms and facilities.
Expedia is entering
a market that is driven by package tour operators, where online
bookings of air travel lag behind consumers' penchant for booking
hotels online. Another challenge is credit card penetration: About
20% of online leisure-travel bookers in Japan do not own a credit
or debit card, according to Forrester Research.
As it did in
Australia, Expedia said it is launching the Japanese site as a
hotel booking site and will add air bookings and dynamic packages
"in the future."
Expedia Japan is
the first wholly owned venture by a U.S. online travel company in
Japan and is a prime component of Expedia's expansion strategy in
the Asia-Pacific region.
Forrester's
principal analyst of travel research, Henry Harteveldt, said "it
appears they've taken steps to make their Japanese site culturally
relevant. And it's no surprise they're starting with hotels. That's
one of Expedia's product strengths and a product that is also more
lucrative financially for them than air."
In a separate
expansion move, Expedia Corporate Travel planned to close last week
on the acquisition of MTM Reisen, a corporate travel agency in
Munich.
MTM Reisen, which
books about $14 million in travel annually and has a meetings and
incentives business, would supplement ECT's Belgium, France and
U.K. operations in Europe. Terms of the agreement were not
disclosed.
To
contact reporter Dennis Schaal, send e-mail to [email protected].