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Expedia Group

Expedia Group – A Travel Technology Company leveraging its platform for connecting Travelers with Brands.

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Expedia Group is one of the world’s largest travel platforms founded by Rich Barton in 1996. The company was founded as a division of Microsoft twenty-four years ago. The company’s headquarters are based in Seattle, Washington, US. Travel technology is a sector that has gained huge demand and unleashed the potential for many companies in the past few decades.

Expedia provides a platform where travelers can connect with hotels, find different tour packages, and most importantly offers plenty of choices. A company like Expedia helps out every kind of tourist and traveler to have the best travel experience at the same time gives a platform for small travel businesses to grow. Since Expedia has a strong online presence, it provides exposure to local companies in the travel sector thus uplifting small businesses.

A Brief Introduction of Expedia Group

Expedia Group can be best described as a group of travelers and technologists working around the clock to make your journey memorable and worthy. The company is highly dedicated to connecting travelers with the right partners across a global platform. Throughout the past twenty-four years, Expedia has acquired and partnered with several companies creating extensive portfolios of many businesses and brands.

Expedia Group
Image Source: media.bizj.us

Today, Expedia has more than  70 terabytes of data which helps them show the most optimized path for both the business and the traveler to gain the best experience. Expedia has many products under its brand name such as BedandBreakfast.com, CarRentals.com, Hotels.com, Local Expert, etc. So, let’s have a glimpse at how this journey started.

History of Expedia Group

Back in 1996, there weren’t many online travel agencies and hence the market had lesser competition. Expedia was established as Microsoft Expedia Travel Services and soon the word Expedia became very common every time traveling came up as a topic of discussion. The word Expedia was born from two words “Exploration” and “Speed” and the quality of work justified the name of the company. The company went public in 1999 and got spun off as an independent business.

In 2001, IAC/InterActiveCorp showed interest in the company and bought shares worth $1.5billion. After two years, Expedia was fully acquired by IAC/InterACtiveCorp and it became a part of IAC Travel. After the acquisition, Rich Barton stepped down from the position of CEO and he was replaced by Erik Blachford. Next year, IAC Travel was spun off into Expedia and the former CEO was replaced by Dara Khosrowshahi. After IAC Travel and Expedia became a single entity the parent company spun off Expedia Inc in 2005. Many businesses were under the name of Expedia Inc such as Expedia Corporate Travel, TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, etc.

Expedia Group
Image Source: logos-download.com

In 2011, TripAdvisor media group was spun off from Expedia Inc and the latter got to keep the portfolio of travel transaction brands. This year the company also showed interest in gaining market presence in the Asia Pacific region and hence partnered with Air Asia, Tencent, and eLong. Under the leadership of Dara Khosrowshahi, Expedia became a Fortune 500 company. Gradually, the lines of businesses started expanding for Expedia as it started providing technology solutions and acquired companies in the same field. In 2013, the company invested in metasearch and partnered with Citigroup to create Expedia+cards so that members can earn points and certain benefits. The company went through a rather rough year in 2019 which led to cutting off 3,000 jobs in the next year.

Acquisitions

Expedia Inc acquired a lot of companies since it was born. Most of the companies are US-based businesses while a few are from European countries as well. Expedia made its first acquisition in 2000 when it bought Travelscape, an internet service provider company. Next year, Expedia bought Vacation spot which was also an internet service provider. Expedia bought a handful of travel agencies including Classic Custom Vacations, Metropolitan Travel, Egencia, Travelocity, Orbitz, etc. Recently it acquired CanadaStays, a Canadian holiday rental service.

The CEO: Rich Barton

Richard Barton commonly known as Rich Barton is a very famous American internet entrepreneur currently serving as the CEO of the Zillow Group. In 1989, he graduated from Stanford University with an engineering degree and started working for Microsoft in 1991. He founded Expedia while working in Microsoft as the company was planning to build a travel guidebook back then. Later, Barton understood the potential of Expedia and it was officially launched in 1996. Barton’s successful career made him a billionaire in 2020.

Opel logo

THE RISE OF OPEL IN AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

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The history of Opel dates back to the mid-1800s. For more than 150 years, it has served its customers throughout the entire world, except North America, UK, and Oceania. Adam Opel, a German businessman founded the company, Opel Automobile GmbH. Opel operated under the leadership of General Motors till 2017. In 2017, Groupe PSA, a French multinational company acquired Opel.

About Adam Opel 

Born into a family in Russelsheim in 1837, Adam was the son of Wilhelm. Adam’s father was a locksmith and he studied to become the same until he turned twenty. He received a travel pass in 1857 which permitted him to work as a locksmith. But, something else caught his interest when he moved to Paris. He started learning the new technology of the sewing machine and asked his brother to do the same.

In 1862, Adam returned to his hometown with a business idea to make his sewing machines. His uncle helped him set the business and eventually, his younger brother gave him an extra hand. In 1867, Adam decided to build a factory for the production but unfortunately, his father passed away. In the meantime, Adam married Sophie and he set up the Opel plant with the dowry he received.

The production increased rapidly and by 1899 more than half a million machines were produced. In 1911, a devastating fire destroyed the major portion of the plant. This is when Adam decided to drop the sewing machine production and move to bicycles and automobiles. Adam, Sophia, and their five sons devoted themselves wholeheartedly to the new business. They made way more profit than from selling sewing machines.

At the end of 1887, Opel becomes the best company for innovative designs of cycles in Germany. Adam died in 1895 much before his industry started producing automobiles. Sophie and her sons took over the business but experienced a lot of ups and downs. They sold the company to General Motors Corporation in 1929.

Before the first acquisition 

After Adam died, Sophie and her sons struggled very much to keep the company stable. They started making cars for the first time in 1898 with the help of Friedrich Lutzmann, a locksmith. He was in this industry for some time and the partnership led to the production of Opel’s first car in 1899. But, the designs of the car weren’t good enough to attract either investors or customers. So, Opel dissolved the partnership after a couple of years.

In 1901, the company came to a joint partnership with Automobiles Darracq France. The company started producing vehicles under the brand name Opel Darracq but the production ceased in 1907. After the fire, a new company was established. And, by 1920s Opel became German’s first company to pull out mass production in automobiles. In 1924, a new model, Laubfrosch was released and became a big hit. The company caught the sight of General Motors and by 1929 it acquired 80% of Opel which turned to 100% in 1931.

Post-acquisition and World War II

After the acquisition, a new plant was built in 1935 in Brandenburg. This year the company becomes the first German Company to produce 100,000 units in a single year. The first plant of Opel ranked seventh worldwide in terms of mass production. The automobile production came to a halt in 1940. And, within a couple of years, Opel was busy manufacturing aircraft parts and tanks.

During the post-war years, the second plant was transported to the Soviet Union. So, they built their first Opel Blitz Truck in the Russelsheim plant.

Present-day

Other than Opel, GM’s Vauxhall gave a very tough competition in the market as well. But, in the 1990s, it was Opel that brought major profit in the house. With this profit, GM started expanding its Asian market. But, the profits declined and the company almost sold out during the global financial crisis. To cut-off price and lay low, Opel closed its Belgium plant in 2010. In 2012, Opel announced a major partnership with PSA Peugeot Citroen where GM took 7% of the company’s share. This alliance was made to save around $2 billion in costs per year. But, the company was still running in loss, losing around $257 million in a year. In March 2017, PSA acquired Opel and Vauxhall for $2.2 billion. Next year, Opel made an income of €859 million. This was a big success for the company after a long time.

airbnb

A lodging offering platform, Airbnb has extended its full cancellation policy due to COVID-19

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Coronavirus has become a worldwide crisis. Due to this pandemic, many mega-events are either canceled or postponed, visits are negated, and people are canceling their pre-booked tickets and travels. In the beginning, most of the people were panicked because of the refund complications on their ticket bookings and lodging but now they are relived as the terms are relaxed. Many companies have changed their policies amid coronavirus breakdown. Every sector, every industry, and every human is worried due to coronavirus pandemic. In this situation, Airbnb gave relief to the customers. A lodging offering platform, Airbnb has extended its full cancellation policy keeping this corona pandemic in mind. They have also kept $250 million aside for the hosts who are affected because of these canceled bookings.

Airbnb company’s old policy

Airbnb’s old policy allowed guests to get a full refund if they void their booking within 48 hours of booking their trip, or a 50% refund if they do within seven days. This policy is canceled on Saturday and it is replaced by extenuating circumstances policy.

Who can get a full refund? – New extenuating circumstances policy 

The guests who have booked their stays on Airbnb with the check-in between 14-31st March will get a full refund. This is under Airbnb’s extenuating circumstances policy. With the money that is set aside, Airbnb will ensure that hosts get some of the lost money.

Before this announcement was done, Airbnb expanded its extenuating circumstances policy to refund bookings between the fixed period of 14th March to 31st May. The policy does not talk about the refund terms for hosts though. Some of the Airbnb are upset because the company did not provide any fix financial net to them. As the cancellations are allowed and no new booking is being made, hosts have their calenderer empty. The change in policy has affected the hosts in California, Florida, Kansas, Utah, Michigan and the state of Washington. They have lost thousands of dollars.

Some hosts said that they empathize with the guests as the current situation is not under anyone’s control, but their business and livelihood are at risk. Whereas, some of the hosts are extremely angry and have put the entire blame on Airbnb for the loss of business.

The change is policy is a relief for guests, but the hosts are upset with the company. Airbnb is taking further steps to strengthen the relationship between hosts and them to ensure the unchanged partnership in the future.

Airbnb’s action on hosts’ disappointment

Airbnb is ready to extend help for hosts and the CEO Brian Chesky asks for forgiveness for the chaotic messaging around the policy changes in recent times. He said, “I deeply regret the way we communicated this decision, and I am sorry that we did not consult you — as partners should. We have heard from you and we know we have let you down. You deserve better from us.”

The company has donated $10 million to help its “super hosts” and the ones who’ve been contributing to Airbnb’s tour guide-style practices. Other hosts can apply for $5,000 help from the fund starting from April. The CEO of Airbnb has requested hosts to trust into the company as the trust is the foundation of a partnership.

Airbnb at loss because of travel restrictions

As the entire business of Airbnb depends on travel and tourism, the past few months have been difficult for the company. Because of the restrictions on overall global travel, many small and big companies like Airbnb facing problems with their business, as the countless countries have advised people to stay home and follow the lockdown.

In the US, the guidelines for social distancing have extended until April 30th as the COVID-19 cases are increasing rapidly. As per recent reports, the US has crossed 160000 cases so far and has the highest number in the world. Major population countries like India are under complete lockdown to prevent from getting into community transmission phase.

Bottom line

Not only travel and hotel businesses at risk but also other businesses are facing the impact of coronavirus spread all over the world. In some countries, the situation is gone out of control and some are in the stage of community transmission. Let’s hope this shall pass soon and everything comes back to normal.

Meanwhile, for any information head to WHO’s site to avoid the spread of misinformation.

HopSkipDrive

Hopskipdrive- To Give Your Kids A Safe Traveling Experience

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Every mom wants to raise their kids with all the care and pampering in the world. So, when they are out of sight for a fraction of the section, moms are worried! Well, this only happens when we are kids, right? Our moms running behind us all the time with any stuff we need irrespective of how insignificant it is. Because we all will be the little one for them no matter how much we grow up. In most of the modern families these days, both the parents are working.

So, the demand for babysitters is never going down any sooner. But, apart from babysitting, they also need a travel companion. Who is going to drop your kids to school? Who is going to take them to their best friend’s birthday party? Worry not, especially when three strong independent women are fighting for a good cause.

HopSkipDrive is a transportation company that exclusively gives transportation facilities to the kids aging from six to seventeen. Janelle McGlothlin, Carolyn Yashari Becher, and Joanna Newman McFarland founded the company in 2015. This start-up is a blessing for every nuclear family in the United States who can now worry less about their kids.

HopSkipDrive is a transportation company that exclusively gives transportation facilities to the kids aging from six to seventeen. Janelle McGlothlin, Carolyn Yashari Becher, and Joanna Newman McFarland founded the company in 2015. This start-up is a blessing for every nuclear family in the United States who can now worry less about their kids.

About the Founders

Janelle went to the University of Pennsylvania and acquired his bachelor’s degree in International Relations. She also went to the Wharton School and received her second bachelor’s degree in Strategic Management. Apart from co-founding HopSkipDrive, Janelle has also founded Writebrand, a branding and copywriting company. She is married to Charly Kemp and has three small kids. Maybe her kids are one of the reasons she thought about this project.

Carolyn received her bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California. And, later went to UCLA School of Law and received Doctor of Law. She also went to The Hebrew University for a one-year program.

Carolyn worked as an intern at the Democratic National Committee. In the beginning, she worked as a Paralegal but later she became the Attorney at Cox, Castle & Nicholson LLP. Apart from HopSkipDrive, she co-founded Becher Law Group, New Los Angeles Charter School, and The Neuromuscular Disease Foundation. Currently, she also serves as a Mentor at Techstars.

Joanna also went to the Wharton School and completed her bachelor’s in economics. In 2005, she graduated from Stanford University with an MBA. She started her career life as a Financial Analyst at Salomon Smith Barney and then switched to Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst. She worked at companies like Green Dot Companies, AT&T Interactive, OneWest Bank, and many more. Currently, she is the CEO of HopSkipDrive and an Investment Partner at XFactor Ventures.

The Story of HopSkipDrive

The company started of a simple conversation the three of them were having at a party. They were chatting with other moms too who were sharing concern about their children. It becomes a huge responsibility when both parents have the same working time. Because you don’t need a babysitter all the time. All you need is someone to drop them where they are supposed to be. So, the trio decided to work on the project of HopSkipDrive and made it a grand success.

A Quality Service

The screening process of HopSkipDrive is undoubtedly very strict. It’s the responsibility of taking care of children. So, the basic criterion of the company is to hire someone with a minimum of five years of experience. Since it is the caregiving experience that matters, most of the employees of the company are women. So, they basically work for a community their own kids are part of.

Parents can track their kids easily with the GPS tracking system. And, there is also a dual authentication process involving code word between the driver and the kid.

The Success

According to the reports of 2020, there are around 2.5 million homeless kids and 440,000 foster kids in the United States. HopSkipDrive wasn’t launched with the aim of taking care of kids from the upper-class society. So, the services have also extended their hands to these helpless kids who deserve equal opportunities.

Currently, HopSkipDrive is a team comprising of more than 100 people and conducting business with more than 7,000 contractors. They have expanded their services to more than eight states and the school districts in thirteen markets. The company has also raised $22 million from its last funding round.

Yatra.com : How a Local Travel Agency Reached Millions of Indians

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Planning a trip, used to be a very hectic task before any of the online travel portals got launched. Now that, we have online travel agents, hotel and flight booking; checking availability of rooms, flights, and other accommodations, seems like a piece of cake.

One such online portal is Yatra.com, one of the most popular online Indian travel companies, that provide the finest travel services starting from booking hotels of your choice to create your own holiday packages. The company was founded on 1 August 2006 by Dhruv Shringi, Manish Amin and Sabina Chopra. It is a Haryana-based online travel agency with a wide spectrum of services and a large customer base.

Dhruv Shringi, CEO of Yatra.com

One of the founders of Yatra.com, Dhruv Shringi, as well as the current CEO of the company, holds an MBA degree from INSEAD. He is also a certified Chartered Accountant who gathered a lot of experience before launching Yatra.com. Before Yatra.com, he worked for Ebookers where he was responsible for sales of $850 million that occurred through multiple channels. The other two founding members also worked with Shringi at Ebookers from 2000-2005. And in the period of working together, these three came up with the idea of Yatra.com.

CEO Yatra.com Dhruv Shringi
Image Source: business-standard.com

Shringi had also worked for the London branch of Ford Motor Company and for 6 years he worked with Arthur Anderson in India. He provided business strategies as well as teamed up with the IT sector of the companies he worked for. A man with such calibre and occupational background is likely to bring some lucrative investors in house, and so he did for Yatra.com.

Growth, Acquisitions, and Strategies

The company started in 2006, with only three members, and crossed 1,000 employees by 2016. Yatra.com is a B2B type business providing flight tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals and holiday packages throughout the entire world. The company started growing rapidly in India from the very beginning and with some strategic acquisitions and investors, the company is now growing roots in international lands as well.

In June 2007, Yatra online was nominated for prestigious 14th Annual World Travel Awards. The company came in partnership with Sify.Com in November 2007. In 2010, Yatra.com became the first online travel company to launch India’s first online ticket cancellation service. The company established a contract with IRCTC on 4 January 2010, and the next month, it tied up with Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation.

On 17 February 2010, Yatra.com came in partnership with Tyroo, followed by a partnership with eBay India and Tripadvisor, the world’s largest travel community, in the month of April of the same year.

On 17 May the same year, the company was awarded the ‘Best Domestic Tour Operator’ award by the Ministry of Tourism. In November, Yatra.com came in a joint venture with American Express. This partnership and the acquisition of TSI, helped the company expand its business, especially for the international flight ticketing. At the end of 2010, Sabina Chopra got felicitated at the Second Annual Women Leaders in India Award 2010. A lot of exclusive holiday packages were launched in this year, which attracted different kinds of travellers.

In 2011, Yatra.com, for the first time, introduced holiday packages to Spain. And, to lure more Indian customers, it launched exclusively ‘Love, Breakups and Zindagi’ package. In April 2011, the company raised funding of $2 billion from blue-chip investors, including Valiant Capital Management, Norwest Venture Partners, and Intel Capital. In November 2011, the company was honoured with CNBC Awaaz Travel Awards for Best Online Travel Agency.

In 2012, Yatra.com won the award for ‘Best Travel Website’ in IAMAI’s 2nd Annual India Digital Awards. The company partnered with ZenithOptimedia Media in the month of March of 2012. It also launched a new credit card in association with SBI. By the time, it became the second largest online travel website in India and owned a 30 per cent share of the travel market related online transactions. The company also acquired a 100 per cent stake in Travelguru.com. In December 2012, Yatra.com, in association with Microsoft, released an app on Windows 8 for its customers.

In 2014, the company came in association with McDonald’s, and also, Rajasthan Royals (Official Travel Partner for IPL 2014). By August 2015, the company dominated the online travel market with booking in over 40,000 hotels. In 2016, Yatra.com incorporated Homestays in its mobile and website app. The statistics showed that in November 2016, 67 per cent of the total Indian travellers where booking holiday packages through Yatra.com. In the same year, Yatra merged with Terrapin 3 Acquisition Crop, which made the company worth $218 million.

The Success

In this journey of 19 years, the company has gained immense trust from its more than 31 million customers. Yatra.com books around 50,000 hotels in more than 500 destinations of India and over 430,000 hotels around the world. On an average rate, Yatra.com hosts more than 20,000 domestic flights and 5,000 hotels bookings per day, through online media and call centres.

Decoding the Life of Ruzwana Bashir: A Woman of Substance

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Hailing from a tight-knit Pakistani community to co-founding PEEK—the story of Ruzwana Bashir is an inspiration to many. Life was not easy for her; she had a tough time growing up. She explained how freedom for women was dreaded upon in her community. It was until college when she started wearing western outfits. Before that, she was obtruded to wear Salwar Kameez and Burkha all the time. Wearing western outfits were not so popular in her family and forbidden in her community. Such inferior experience at a tender age changed her as a person.

Ruzwana Bashir
Image Source: purposegeneration.com

Ruzwana grew up in a small community in Skipton, outskirt of Rotherham. She enrolled in Skipton High School, North Yorkshire. Talking about her childhood, Ruzwana was a brilliant student. With assiduous commitment and sheer dedication, she managed to get into Oxford University. She took Philosophy, Economics and Politics as her major in college. She became second-ever Asian female president of the Oxford Union debating society and remained actively involved in numerous extracurricular activities. Because of her outgoing personality, she became a popular face inside the campus. According to Ruzwana, the turning part in her life came after she got the Fulbright Scholarship to pursue an MBA from Harvard University. There was no turning back after then. After finishing her professional degree, she started working as an investment banker intern at Goldman Sachs. She went on to work with Gilt Groupe and was the founding member of the team for Art.sy before starting with her own venture.

Found glory as an entrepreneur

Ruzwana entrepreneurship journey started in the year 2012. Her idea was to create a market space to connect travellers to local service providers offering booking services to holiday destinations. The ideas worked like a charm. She along with her fellow co-founder, Oskar Bruening, was able to attract investors like Eric Schmidt, Jack Dorsey, and David Bonderman for financial funding. By the end of 2013, Peek expanded exponentially by launching Peek Pro suite, an organized backend software to smooth tour related operations and at the same time launched a mobile application to maximize audience engagements.

In 2014, Peek received another $5 million round of funding. The success of Peek established Ruzwana as the most influential women in Silicon Valley alongside Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg. Apart from several corporate awards, the company emerged out as the top 10 most innovation website by Fast Company. TIME defined Peek to be the top 50 most creative website of 2014. The initial success made Ruzwana the superwomen of Silicon Valley, and later, awarded as the most prominent entrepreneur by Fortune. According to Ruzwana, smart work and vision to think differently is a magical potion to achieve success in life.

Spotlight and the Controversies

Bashir came into the spotlight on 29 August 2014, when she wrote an article in The Guardian, where she delineates her story of survival as a child. Her article on Rotherham’s Asian abuse camp misery gained nationwide attention. In addition, became a shred of prime evidence to initiate an investigation. Once the investigation authority started digging up, more victims came forward. The special team prepared combined testimony of several victims, and later, all perpetrators were sentenced guilty. The whole incident shocked the world. It became clear women suffered sexual abuse and exploitation in captivities. To make matter worse the victims were beaten to the extent that they refrain from registering their complaints. It was Ruzwana initiative that helped in solving several heinous cases.

According to Ruzwana, the struggles she had gone through her life really helped her out how to handle the extreme situation and remain composed. She utilised those experience on her journey to entrepreneurship. Her calm temperament shows her mental toughness, she is not just an amazing person but also a woman of a substance.