Inside Expedia’s B2B engine, powering 60,000+ travel partnerships (WiT Studio) transcript

let the show begin next generation for the wi we're going all in all together now let's [Applause] begin so we're here in the wit studio with Eileen Chan vice president APAC for sales private label solution at Expedia group Eileen thank you so much for joining us today thank you for having me so I want to start by asking you about um something that that I've been thinking about right so we've been hearing a lot about uh the growth of Expedia group um and it's B2B side of things and within Expedia group there's a dedicated division called private label Solutions can you expand on private label Solutions um what that entails and how it supports businesses to offer you know like travel services to their customers yep sure so you're absolutely spot on so private labor Solutions is the dedicated B2B business within expedient group right so what we do is we use our travel Solutions and Technology together with our travel supply and help businesses around the world create you know Unique Travel platforms that suits their customer base right so imagine if you are an airline right and you would like to offer hotels as part of the air attached experience we can help you with that right or if you are a banking company and you would like to offer your most lawyer customer base with an endtoend travel experience we can help you build it so we offer three main I would say um Solutions so we have our API solutions that we call Rapid right and that allows our partners to build really customized um end to endend experience based on their own design and um and sub motion we have the other solution what we call the white labor template and that is something that is custom built by us for our HS right and the very last solution would be what we call our te program so that is the travel agent um affiliate program so that is very dedicated and um targeted at the offline more of a brick and water kind of travel companies that want a simple lockin solution to serve their customers right we are working with up to 60,000 different businesses around the world right um which is a huge number it is a huge number a huge number yeah I mean we didn't get there through you know um it was it took us multiple years to get to this number not an overnight thing no no no not at all and I would say that in APAC we work with a lot of different companies again as I mentioned a lot of the brick and motar travel companies travel agencies but we also work with airlines that Kate or we and we work with the most sophisticated kind of like OTAs like trip.com in China or the travel Marketplace players like da in China or TB in India right so a magnitude of different players that we work with across the globe and in Asia Pacific expedient group has also establish itself as a key player and and and some would say even a leader in this space right in B2B travel Partnerships what strategic decisions or Innovations do you think contributed the most to that sort of like rapid growth I know you said it's not an overnight thing but it can be considered still quite fast um in this segment so yeah um I am actually super proud that we are now considered the leader in the B2B partnership space right and last year alone right we did I think 25 billion wores of bookings and that represent about 100 million room lights right last year you're saying all these big numbers you said 60,000 and now you've gone into you into the billions correct exactly right and again we didn't get this you know in a day y right and I would say that the Asia Pacific region is a major contributor mhm I would say fundamentally the one thing is really about our very laser focus on what our partner really need mhm right in everything that we do right we know that in as Asia Pacific and in actual fact different markets in Asia is different on its own right Asia Pacific though we call it as a region it's really not a region on right like there are so many different local nuances whether you're in Malaysia or you're in Thailand it's already different and super fragmented right super fragmented so we realized very early on that our partners in this part of the world what they really want is actually control over their own transaction right and the reason why they rightfully rightfully so right because in this part of the world we have so many different payment types for instance so giving that kind of flexibility to our demand Partners or private labor Solutions partner is like fundamental and this is one of the reason why we have grown so rapidly in this region um given your experience in emerging markets and uh strategic account management right what trends or shifts do you see U shaping B2B travel distribution in this region the more I think the travel industry adopts AI right the easier it would be for all of us to improve that pre-trip experience for our traveler through better personalization right imagine using the data to kind of help predict and generate um very tailent made customized um itineries to help with that pre-trip experience I think that is so so so powerful and so useful I'll love it as a traveler yeah right just last quarter our AI powered virtual tool has actually addressed 700,000 requests again with the the numbers yeah it's a huge number just a quarter alone we address 700,000 requests from Travelers and agents that had booked through our white label template sit as well as our tap um solution right so you can imagine this brings a lot of convenience efficiency to The Traveler and to our agent right and on top of that it's also about cost savings right cutting away the need for human intervention right right we have an AI powered as well fraud prevention solution within expedi group right right and this solution actually helped us to to predict to kind of like prevent right fraudulent or or fraudulent um you know activities suspicious activities real time and automatically and last year we also prevented $2.5 billion dollar worth of you know fraud attempts on the expedience side so that again it's like super great savings for the company and the good news is fra prevention as a solution is also now available for our private labor Solutions Partners so so it's another tech product that you have another tech product um MX gbt which is a which is one of our largest corporate partner um in the business has actually signed up for this solution so switching over to Consumer Brands so you know the group also has a strong presence in consumer Brands how how do you ensure that the B2B side complement and doesn't compete with the consumer side of things right so Expedia group consumer Brands namely expedia.com hotels.com and bble right they cater to millions of Travelers around the world right rightfully so but I think the travel industry in the world is huge right and people like you and me we travel multiple times a year mhm we travel for different purposes right and one of the business that private labor solution business uh Partners bring is actually on the business in corporate Travelers right yeah so that is a different category of of of travel Al together that our consumer brands do not actually serve different needs completely different right travel purpose that's one um and there are markets which our consumer Brands intentionally do not operate in now or even in the future right and this is where we come in from the B2B perspective right allowing experient group to expand and extend our footprint and network across the world right and lastly even in markets where we do overlap a lot of our a lot of our partners have their own very very unique customer base super lawyer right or they have their own loyalty program that no matter what right the stickiness is there right and it is completely different use case between our exped group consumer Brands so there's definitely Synergy rather than competition um in in in strategy between B2B and b2c in Expedia group right and it's interesting that you say overlap because you know another component in this ecosystem are the suppliers right right um and I was wondering like what value does Private Label Solutions offer suppliers and how do these partnership sort of enhance the broader travel ecosystem in in ape going back to that sort of fragmented nature of things I mean again because travel is so huge you can actually see our private labor solution solution business as a bridge connecting these suppliers to these very unique and incremental Travelers that our B2B Network actually brings like a web yeah cor right you can see us as like a entire B2B kind of ecosystem right so imagine if you're a hotel in Brazil and you would like to Target a traveler in Malaysia right we our B2B Network can actually do that faster and I guess cheaper I would say you know for you as a hotelier right and not only I mean I'm using Malaysia but you know we have a really wide spread footprint across the Asia Pacific region right right so whether you want to Target Travelers in Indonesia we have Partnerships with travel Loca right or make my trip in India yeah so we can provide you with that unique reach you as a hotel and unique reach right um way way way faster and way cheaper awesome e thank you so much for your time no worries thank you for having me once again [Music]