In 1996, a small division within Microsoft launched online travel booking site Expedia.com®, which gave consumers a revolutionary new way to research and book travel. Three years later, Expedia was spun out of Microsoft, becoming a publicly traded company on NASDAQ under the symbol EXPE. Meanwhile, the other brands in the current day Expedia, Inc. portfolio were independently established and began their respective courses of development.
In the first few years of the new millennium, Expedia® became – and remains – the world’s leading online travel company. By 2001, it had acquired a number of other travel companies and in 2002 InterActiveCorp (IAC) acquired a controlling interest in Expedia. Expedia grew within IAC, and its synergies with its parent company’s other travel holdings became more and more salient. In 2005, IAC spun out its travel businesses under the name Expedia, Inc. Today Expedia, Inc. is the parent company to a global portfolio of leading consumer brands.
Expedia’s corporate headquarters are located in Bellevue, Washington, with offices throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions.
Expedia, Inc. employs 7,960 full-time and part-time employees worldwide across its network of brands, including approximately 1,770 employees of eLong, Inc., a Chinese subsidiary. These employees make Expedia what it is today, with responsibilities ranging from customer service and website development to securing the best selection of travel options available anywhere. In fact, Expedia has over 400 employees based in local markets throughout the world who are solely focused on growing and managing Expedia’s valued relationships with hotel and airline partners and other travel suppliers.
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Global Presence
The brands that comprise Expedia, Inc. operate sites localized for more than 90 points of sale in more than 60 countries worldwide.
- Expedia has local-language sites in 20 countries worldwide.
- Hotels.com operates 73 local country sites, throughout North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region.
- Egencia, the fifth largest corporate travel management company in the world, has local-language sites in 39 countries worldwide.
