Aussie rivals blast back at Expedia

The world’s largest online travel agency has filled its Australian competitors with anger through launching multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns that attack them for the extortionate fees it claims are annoying consumers.

Expedia famously axed all of its online booking fees around a year and a half ago and is making use of the campaign, which includes 30-second TV spots, in order to draw a line under charges levied by its bricks and mortar competitors.

The travel giant says that research commissioned last year revealed that website fees angered consumers with 75% of 1100 Australians surveyed saying that they shouldn’t be charged.

Scott Durchslag, Expedia Worldwide’s president, told of his shock to learn that Australian travel rivals like Wotif and WebJet were, and still are, charging fees of anything up to $50 with no added value. I’m stunned consumers across Australia aren’t completely up in arms on this in the same way that they are about banking fees, he pointed out.

Durchslag said that Expedia has moved away from transactional mindsets that its competitors have to adopt a strategy that is more customer-focused strategy. In America, he explained, around 50% of travel bookings are made online. While in Australia its about half that, across Asia it gets even less.

Alana Theodore of Travel.com.au has hit back at Expedia, stating that Australian travellers should start concentrating on the total costs of the airfare as opposed to the size of booking fees.