Online travel giant Expedia is poised to move into selling package holidays.
Expedia senior vice-president for global market management Cyril Ranque said: “There is a huge opportunity in offering packages to customers.”
Speaking at the World Tourism Forum in Lucerne on Friday, Ranque said: “We do dynamic packages, selling the old way: select a flight, select a hotel, select transfers, activities and you’re set.
“But there is much more potential in filtering the needs of the consumer – by price, length of stay, destination, theme, size of group.
“There is a lot of opportunity to present the right product.”
Ranque told the forum: “Packages are the next big area. We are going to invest a lot of money [in this].”
He added: “To optimise all revenue margins we need to be in all ‘buckets’. But being strong in the main bucket – the mass market – is what is most important.”
Expedia claims to be the world’s biggest online travel agency with a turnover of $4 billion last year on sales worth $34 billion.
Ranque said a company the size of Expedia could not make changes and innovate at the pace of smaller companies.
He said: “Innovation only works in small increments. Start-ups can be disruptive. But we are a mass retailer. We can’t lose the customer. We can’t be disruptive.”