The travel service also added new destinations to its Expedia World Guide, which was the most popular feature of its web site. Other improvements included consolidating the Flight Wizard, Hotel Wizard, and Car Wizard onto a single screen, thus reducing download time.
In February Expedia launched the Expedia Associates Program, which gave suppliers and other companies access to Expedia's booking engine to set up co-branded web sites. Toward the end of Microsoft expanded Expedia's reach by launching an Expedia travel service in the United Kingdom. The site provided consumers with details on air fares, hotels, and car rentals. It also included a section offering discounted, late-availability packages from various tour operators.
To book their travel services, consumers in the United Kingdom had to call a toll-free telephone number or send in an e-mail request. Destination information on Expedia's U. In its first three months of operation, Expedia's U. About one-fourth of its business came from business travelers in small and medium-sized companies. In its third year of operation Expedia had become the 25th largest travel agency in the United States and was projected to join the top ten by the end of the year.
Expedia's U. The company had grown from a staff of 40 developers to more than full-time employees, including about customer service representatives who provided ticket fulfillment at Atlanta-based WorldTravel Partners.
In September Microsoft announced that it would sell a minority interest in Expedia to the public through an initial public offering IPO. It was the first time that Microsoft had spun off one of its businesses. The move suggested that electronic commerce in general, and online travel in particular, had become established.
The company sold 5. Microsoft retained the remaining Similar to Priceline's online bidding service that allowed consumers to name a price they were willing to pay, Expedia's Price Matcher for hotels and airline tickets let consumers name their own price.
Expedia also was facing another lawsuit filed by Reed Elsevier in November on behalf of its subsidiary, Cahners Travel Group, which claimed that Expedia breached a contract regarding the use of Cahners' worldwide hotel directory database. At the beginning of Expedia and Travelocity were locked in a battle for the top ranking among online travel services.
Following its IPO in November, Expedia experienced more traffic at its site than Travelocity during the holiday season, according to Media Metrix. Travelocity's planned takeover of Preview Travel and an alliance with Priceline. The campaign's taglines were, "Don't just travel. Travel right," and "Where do you want to go today? In February Expedia made two significant acquisitions that enabled it to offer a wider range of accommodations.
The company also announced that it would acquire Travelscape. The acquisition of these two online lodging leaders gave Expedia listings for 65, properties worldwide, guaranteed lowest hotel rates in cities, and some two million room nights per year. The company had invested heavily in operations during the year, including new technology that enabled its pricing engine to run on PCs instead of a large mainframe computer. The new fare-searching technology meant that Expedia could price more itineraries than other travel agencies, giving customers more choices and more flexibility.
Fiscal was also the first year that Expedia shifted its business model from one of primarily selling airline tickets to one that included more profitable lodging and package transactions. The company's workforce also had grown to about employees during the year.
Pay is salary, bonuses, etc. Exercised is the value of options exercised during the fiscal year. Scores indicate decile rank relative to index or region. A decile score of 1 indicates lower governance risk, while a 10 indicates higher governance risk.
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