Blog homeI know, I know - we all make mistakes. However secretly we all enjoy reading other people’s misfortunes. This time it is Expedia’s turn.
Expedia UK , as reported by Travolution [See post] have launched a new scheme for offline UK travel agents to access their hotel inventory. This is, on the face of it, quite an interesting scheme.
From the travel agent’s perspective it gives access to equal rates (in particular for late availability) and therefore enables them to compete with other online travel agents.
From Expedia’s perspective it enables them to understand the size of the offline market better - and gives them invaluable insight into the natural progression to full online sales. It also makes them look like they are “siding” with travel agents - which is all helpful PR vs the pureplay online guys. It may also help stop hotel chains from “cutting” Expedia inventory - as Expedia can say they are not just an online travel website - but a travel agent distribution channel. This significantly reduces Expedia’s risk of losing contracted hotel product.
All round, great for everyone.
However, if you are launching to the UK market - and making a big PR announcement, don’t you think you would first make sure your sign up form would accept UK address styles? I think I would.
Yep - the form only takes numeric postcodes…… which, er, excludes all UK travel agents. I am sure they will have it fixed in a jiffy. (And note to Expedia - if you hadn’t done this - I wouldn’t have covered your announcement - so, er, you should be glad you did!)
Hat tip to one of my clients who kindly pointed me towards this unfortunate fail.
If you want coverage that is more sensible than mine, I suggest you read Travolution’s coverage on this launch
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Its a classic crossover mistake - I have seen plenty of websites mess up by not customising their sites for use by international users… I am sure they will fix it quick enough, but makes you wonder why companies screw up on such a small change before spending thousands on PR…
HAHAHA love it.
These travel agencies that want to do business with EXPEDIA might know that EXPEDIA is a huge scam. Besides scaming travelers, apparently, accordign to RyanAir, EXPEDIA failed to (meaning try to scam ?) paid RyanAir as they had initially agreed. (Click on my name for more info on these issues).
If RyanAir has troubles with EXPEDIA , what can a small travel agency expect from EXPEDIA. Only scam.
@Alex - commenter John (above) is a spammer.
Kevin May: why don’t you let Alex judge my post and decide to delete or keep the comment? Maybe Alex also feel that people must know what is going on from a real victim of EXPEDIA.
I see…………, If I click on you name I go the the Travolution.co.uk site (according to your point of view that should be spam too) that has several articles about EXPEDIA (neutral articles but that is good publicity for EXPEDIA). Is EXPEDIA paying Travolution to write article abour them? Is Travolution afraid or loosing some bucks if everybody know the true nature of EXPEDIA ? Honestly I don’t know what is the relationship between Travolution and EXPEDIA. Is there one?
Let us know please and make this a meaningful discussion.
Hi John
At the moment the thread is staying. However I may, at no notice, delete these comments if I feel like it.
As a trained journalist working for a reputable magazine (one I very much like) - I am sure that Kevin writes about all companies impartially. Even suggesting otherwise causes me anxiety.
On another topic - do you fancy being interviewed for this blog? I would love to know more about your motivation for creating your site.
Alex
@John,
It’s been a while since we’ve seen you appearing on any UK travel blogs.
The reason for my comment is that you are well known to us - and we would hazard a guess, a few other bloggers - for posting comments on our blog to highlight the victimsofexpedia, shameonexpedia and rifoffreport sites.
As we’ve said to you in the past, these ‘comments’ do not add to the conversation and some might argue merely serve to direct traffic to your consumer-focused site.
You are well aware of the Travolution site.
Such as here:
http://www.travolution.co.uk/blog/2006/10/tripadvisor-and-expedia-content-battle-thickens.php
And here:
http://www.travolution.co.uk/blog/2006/09/travolutionphocuswright-brussels.php
So here’s another comment on another blog:
http://www.blogontravel.com/the-10-most-influential-people-in-the-online-travel-industry/
And another:
http://tims-boot.blogspot.com/2007/03/expedias-dead-michael-oleary.html
Oh, and here on SEOMoz:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/expedia-privileged-above-all-others-at-google
TravelPR Blog had something to say about it here:
http://www.thetravelprblog.com/2008/03/19/expedia-its-not-all-plain-sailing/
We could go on…
We recall asking you to stop using our blog to promote your site unless you had something relevant to add to the conversation. We are glad you did stop. Maybe we are wrong about your intentions and therefore accept graciously that we might have got this completely wrong…
Anyway, we do wish you all the luck in the world with ‘victims’ project.
With regards to your comments about the Travolution site, for the record:
“Is EXPEDIA paying Travolution to write article abour [SIC] them?”
No.
“Is Travolution afraid or loosing [SIC] some bucks if everybody know [SIC] the true nature of EXPEDIA?”
We haven’t recieved any payment from Expedia to write about them, as outlined above - likewise I wouldn’t be concerned about any commercial relationship we have with any advertisers just because of our editorial content.
“neutral articles but that is good publicity for EXPEDIA”.
Not necessarily so.
@Alex
Thanks for the opportunity to respond.
Hi Alex. Thanks for keeping the discussion.
First to Kevin: as you said, I stopped commenting in Travolution immediately when you asked me (I still keep the e-mails we had exchanged. We both respected each other. After that issue, I didn’t mention you in any of my website or posted a negative comment about you in any blog. That is why I felt surprised when you called me “spammer” (at least in two different blogs). You might not like finding my comments in other blogs but that is not reason to start calling me “spammer”. That sound like you were trying to defend EXPEDIA. Thanks for the clarification that you are not being paid by EXPEDIA. We all know that some people just like to sympathize with bad guys (in this case EXPEDIA). There is nothing illegal with that, is just a different ethical value we don’t share and I respected.
To Alex: regarding your question “do you fancy being interviewed for this blog? I would love to know more about your motivation for creating your site”.
My motivation is to alert people about how EXPEDIA is scamming people. As I said my case is so gruesome in details that if I let them keep scamming others without doing nothing I will feel bad. Is the same kind of motivation you might find in rape victims when they try to help other people to prevent rape. In this case is not rape but scam.
I can show you evidence of EXPEDIA lies and tricks they used when they tried to scam me. Some of the facts are shown in this particular website: http://www.victimsofexpedia.com/mycase.htm
For a very honest and meaningful interview and to be fair with EXPEDIA, I would suggest you invite TO JOIN US some of EXPEDIA’s CEOs (Maybe Mr Paul Brown or Dara Khosrowshahi). I’ll be glad to have an interview with all of them. I have so many questions for them too. So far they never responded any of my messages where I showed them evidence that EXPEDIA made an attemp to scam me.
If that is not posible, send me your all your questions by e-mail and I will answer them in full details. I doubt we are going to have a personal interview unless you are willing to travel abroad (are you? if YES, you are welcome).
Please don’t hesitate to cantact me by e-mail (feel free to not show the link I put in this comment or to not show the entire comment. Just let know Kevin about my response).
John
@ John
The problem is that you add no value to the discussion (like your initial post here) and post off-topic about your issues with Expedia. In the past you have left a number of comments on my blog, and all of them were deleted, wasting your time more than mine.
Unfortunately, you have a reputation as someone who posts off-topic, and it’s worth bearing in mind that most bloggers aren’t cheap and an easy route to promote websites.
Get involved in the discussions on blogs and you might find that more beneficial.
@John I do not know the real story behind you and your sites. It may well be you and your readers have legitimate gripes against Expedia. Your sites may well be the best place to express those gripes. But you undermine your own case when you appear to engage in spam like behaviour in blog posts. In the case of the BOOT blog (assuming you are the same guy - apologies if not) I objected to every single post that mentioned the word Expedia being blanketed with the same comment regardless of the context and regardless of the relevance.
see here http://tims-boot.blogspot.com/2008/08/dear-readers-what-should-i-do-with-this.html
As per above - the comments did not add to the conversation. Rather the comments were designed to drive awareness for you and your campaign and maybe even to drive links and search relevance. If you believe in what you are doing, keep doing it. But please do not use blog comment sections as a form of marketing. You should drive marketing the old fashioned online way through good content, relevance and a little bit of paid search.
Darren: off- topic? no more than some of the comments you decided not to delete. Besides, isn’t your blog about travelling? Specially the name of your blog: “travel rant”. By the way I never read any rant there. Maybe you need to change the name of your blog. I just thought some “travel” bloggers would be willing to help travelers to make the travel industry better. Actually, a lot of bloggers do. You can find my comments about EXPEDIA in many blogs and the owners of those blogs decided to keep them and let people know about the scam. Thanks to them less people are being scammed. Isn’t that good?
Anyway, after I saw you deleted my comments (2 or 3 I think) I never post any other comments. I respected your position. Good luck with your blog.
TIM: is not me. I only use John or John Doe. You don’t need to apologize.
1) I accept I put comments that some bloggers consider off-topic- in some blogs where EXPEDIA is mentioned (including yours) but I try to respect people as Kevin and Darren can confirm here right now.
I don’t use any robot or automatic device.
2) When I leave a link to my site (or even the link on my name) is only about EXPEDIA and there is no “pay per click” or paid ad in that site. The only ads I have there are “link exhanges” for what I don’t make a penny. Jut for the record, I never send e-mails.
3) I found that some people are spamming (by e-mail) \pretending to be from victimsofexpedia and redirecting to spam sites. I don’t who is behind that but I think the idea is to make bloggers ungry and delete those post or automatically filter them (including the legitimate gripes). The long term result is that less rants will surface, people won’t be alerted and more travelers will be scamed by EXPEDIA. They were succesful. Very Smart.
To Kevin: You posted this comment in TIM’s BLOG “”Conny” and her counterpart “John”/”Jon” have been spamming the Travo Blog for the past year. Delete it. It’s linkbuilding rubbish and irrelevant to your conversation.” . WRONG: “Conny” has nothing to do with John Doe (maybe she? is just another victim). I posted few comments in Travolution until you asked me to stop.
Again, the result is that less people are being alerted because spammers are somehow helping EXPEDIA in many ways.
Hope this comment help to start a serious investigations about what is really going on and who is who. At this point, the only thing I can assure you guys is that everything regarding my case is true.
@ John
Yes, off-topic.
As for rants, there’s plenty of them on there, but then you wouldnt know if your only looking for posts with the word ‘Expedia’ in there.
@john - i guess i’m not the only one who has concerns about how you comment on travel blogs.
Hey all,
Published an interview now
Interview with VictimsOfExpedia