Published on the 14/05/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
A locally hosted instance of Expedia’s cloud-based services will allow Australian airlines, travel and tourist operators to use the company’s smarts to develop richer cost-effective information systems…
Online travel specialist Expedia is planning to launch an Australian-hosted version of its services later this year. For wholly owned subsidiary Expedia Affiliate Network, which provides white-label access to Expedia technology, this will allow it to work with local clients on developing much richer information systems that were previously too expensive because of backhaul costs or too slow because of latency associated with accessing Expedia’s US-based network.
Eachan Fletcher, chief technology officer of EAN, during a visit to Australia this week said that internationally around 10,000 companies partnered with Expedia, using its technology footings to develop their own online travel systems.
While the company is coy about naming many local clients, it said both Tiger and Jetstar were users.
Fletcher said that the broadband infrastructure in Australia was “not quite as mature, especially with respect to backhaul demand” as that available internationally, which had led to some issues for clients, given the amounts of data often needed to be accessed by travel focused applications. “To make a rich interactive site the sheer time to transmit has held customers back a bit. Some partners made the decision not to have some functions. In the future we will be able to offer a lot more than we do today,” said Fletcher.
By offering a local instance of the Expedia service the costs and latency problems would be taken “out of the equation” allowing local customers to develop much richer applications using Expedia’s technology, he said.
In terms of future development Fletcher said that so far Expedia had delivered technology that basically provided consumers with an online version of the tools that a travel agent might use. In the future he said the company would deploy artificial intelligence and machine learning in order to more closely mimic the experience a consumer might expect if they visited a travel agent.
Fletcher said the first software to allow that was currently available as a beta version. In the future companies would be able to use the Expedia tools to build their own online booking or inquiry systems able to deliver a “very compelling experience.”
