In 2015 the customer is more in control and more connected than ever. Gary Morrison, SVP of Retail at Expedia Worldwide, shares views on how to address this challenge

Eric Schmidt recently announced that the internet will disappear: disappear in the sense that it will simply become ubiquitous. It’s for this reason that in 2015, Expedia will stop thinking about mobile as a distinct channel and simply think about data and how data can improve the travel experience for its customers.

EyeforTravel hears more from Gary Morrison, SVP of Retail, Expedia Worldwide about Expedia’s priorities in 2015.

Top takeaways

• Don’t think about mobile as a distinct channel
• Test and learn but do it fast  
• Consider what your customers do and what they don't do 
• Make reviewing as painless and as real-time as possible
• Be relevant to the market you are operating in

EFT: Where does Expedia see the growth opportunities for mobile in the travel industry in 2015?

GM: The way we look at it is more a question of where are the pain points for our customers and how we can use the technology available to us to solve these. Mobile has helped us to move our relationship with customers beyond booking to supporting customers as they travel, but there are still a number of areas where we can improve. With growing interaction on mobile, it will certainly play a significant role, but it shouldn’t be viewed as an isolated solution; it needs to be part of a connected strategy.

EFT: What will the industry look like five years from now? 

GM: If we look back at the last five years and the five years before that, we can see a marked shift in the pace of innovation.

The volume of data available to us is growing exponentially and so is our ability to process that data, meaning that what would have taken months to gain enough data to test in the past, we can now test in hours.

The ability to test and learn from customers will be increasingly important in the battle to offer the best service to customers so now more than ever, our customers will decide what the industry will look like in five years time.

EFT: On that note, what should be top of mind for industry players today?

GM: Their customers. The companies who really put their customers first are those that are reaping the benefits. While reviews are certainly an important part of listening to customers, the way we think about listening to our customers goes beyond just listening to what they say, but considering also what they actually do and what they don’t do.

If they don’t use a service or feature as we’d expected, for example, we need to be asking ourselves what we are missing. Rather than focusing on complex solutions to help us track customers across channels, we could simply ask:

• How can we offer a real benefit in creating or logging into their account?
• How can we better anticipate the needs of our customers and take the work out of the process?

Mobile is offering one way to push more information to customers, but we need to ensure that that information is really valuable and relevant - information they actually want to receive from us.

We need to be thinking about designing around data, and how people interact with data, rather than focusing purely on the device 

We need to be thinking about designing around data, and how people interact with data, rather than focusing purely on the device. 

EFT: Personalisation, specifically dynamic content personalisation, and contextual mobile seem to be a major focus today: is this a priority for Expedia and what impact does that have on mobile strategy?

GM: Our priority is getting the right information to customers at the right time. In other words: how we can make the travel experience smoother for our customers.

There are a number of ways mobile can help here. One example is that by breaking down reviews into a few taps or swipes we can take the pain out of reviewing – and with mobile we can do this in real-time.

We can capture opinions when they are really fresh and gather more balanced opinions from real customers. So when you’ve checked in, we can just ask you if you liked the check-in experience, or after your first night, how was the room?  

By offering services like real-time reviews, our partners can fix problems as they happen; we are also giving more information to our partners to help them to determine which issues really matter. 

EFT: What is the future of mobile advertising/mobile rewards?

GM: We don’t think about customers in terms of mobile customers or desktop customers. People are shifting across devices at different times of the day, so we need to ensure the experience we deliver is consistent regardless of what platform they are using.

A connected strategy enables us to see customers as ‘customers’ rather than segmenting them as ‘device users’

Again we believe that relevance is key. The rewards offered need to be relevant to customers in each market, in a way which is most convenient for them, so some customers may prefer to receive rewards in the form of points for a coalition scheme like Nectar in the UK or to earn Expedia loyalty points when spending on your Citi card in the US.

A connected strategy enables us to see customers as ‘customers’ rather than segmenting them as ‘device users’ and to reward them for their loyalty equally regardless of the device they most recently used.

Why not join Eyefortravel @ Mobile World Congress 2015 (March 2) to hear more from Gary Morrison and other senior travel industry executives