Expedia moves to digitise Thailand’s offline second-city hoteliers

During a briefing to the media at Expedia’s head office in Bangkok, the bookings giant announced two new products for its supplier-facing portal Partner Central. This came with the announcement that most of Thailand’s secondary cities’ hotels are still not online and therefore unable to take advantage of on country’s tourism boom.

Pimpawee Nopakitgumjorn, director of market management at Expedia Group, said that business opportunities are missed because “hoteliers who are still operating offline will ultimately lose the opportunity to capitalise on Thailand’s growing inbound tourism.”

However the Expedia executive was unable to provide exact percentage, or even a ballpark figure, to back up the observation at the time of writing.

Yet the company insists their assertion is correct and that the new features of the portal, Co-Browse and Adaptive Landing Page, are necessary to stimulate Thai regional markets, such as Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, Ko Lipe, Mae Hong Son, Trang and Trat.

Though not developed specifically for Thailand, the country is one of the first nations to be offered the new functionality as part of the recent agreement between Expedia and the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) to drive future tourism growth to Thailand – with a focus on secondary destinations.

Pivotal

The Co-Browse and Adaptive Landing Page features have been conceived to ease the transition of typically offline properties into the world of online bookings through simple directions backed up with video tutorials as well as video call assistance from the Expedia team if needed. TAT have also created a series of workshops to “accelerate digital skills transfer” for hoteliers if required.

Nopakitgumjorn said: “Together with TAT, Expedia Group is committed to playing a pivotal role in improving digital literacy across Thailand’s hospitality sector and ultimately help generate more income for local economies”.

The products

• Co–Browse is a trouble-shooting tool designed to solve hotel partners’ pain points when they have navigation problems on Expedia Group’s Partner Central platform. It provides hotel partner the capability to share their Partner Central webpage via a connection with Expedia Group consultant in real-time. Once a connection is established, the consultant can view, point to, and highlight areas of the screen to better assist hotel partners in navigating and performing operational tasks on Partner Central.

• Adaptive Landing Page is designed to provide customised content and recommendations on the Partner Central homepage for hotel partners based on their current needs and familiarity with the different tools within Partner Central. The Adaptive Landing Page provides a simplified and more personalised experience for newly onboarded hotel partners so they can understand the most essential tools and time-sensitive tasks on Partner Central quickly, enabling them to optimise content, maximise visibility and accelerate booking potential on Expedia Group’s marketplace.