U.S. online travel firm Expedia to monitor mobile platforms: Yonhap

By Lim Chang-won Posted : August 14, 2018, 15:00 Updated : August 14, 2018, 15:00

[Courtesy of Expedia]


SEOUL -- U.S. online travel company Expedia Group Inc. said Tuesday it will closely review feedback from customers in South Korea, one of the most wired countries in the world, to better accommodate the increasing number of travelers using mobile transactions globally.

According to the company, more than 50 percent of its traffic arrives via mobile platforms, with one-third of bookings made through mobile. In South Korea, more than 50 percent of bookings are made using mobile devices.

"At the end of last year, we made a decision to further focus on Korea and make Korea a key component in our mobile global strategy," Gabriel Garcia, Global Head of Expedia's Mobile Apps Marketing, said during a media event in Seoul.

As part of the move, Expedia's engineers and marketers gathered in Seoul earlier this year to learn about customer needs and find ways to design products for Koreans that can also be scaled up for global implementation, he said. "We are designing and building our mobile app for Koreans and taking from Korea to the rest of the world," Garcia said. "The growth we have seen in this market speaks for itself."

South Korea's mobile purchases increased steeply for years as smart devices rapidly replace computers as the platform for carrying out online transactions. According to Aaron Price, Chief Marketing Officer at Expedia, the number of flight bookings made through its Korean website more than doubled in one year as of June. Expedia opened its Korean website in 2011 and began the flight booking service in 2017.
(Yonhap)
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