Online Transaction Broker (expedia.com)

Expedia.com is an online US-based online travel transaction broker (an agency which receives commission by selling the partners' products or services) which provides booking for airline tickets, car rentals, hotel reservations, cruises, promotional packages, etc. only within US routes. It has been awarded a Webby Award in the area of "Best in Travel Websites" and a Stevie Award from the American Business Association for "Most Innovative Company".

Purpose
Expedia serves the travelling consumers’ needs by giving them a tool to gather information, plan and purchase a whole trip. The website also can be used by different segments of travelers ranging from family holiday trip to business needs. It also helps in reducing transaction costs of customers as they can save more time by searching available options faster. By providing the above to customers, this kind of business is therefore promoting a greener environment.

Features
Expedia website is comprehensive in terms of providing an extensive selection of partners of airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rental, cruises and many other in-destination services. It uses multiple global distribution systems for flights and for hotels and also synchronizes with hotel partners own hotel reservation system for their contracted bulk rate reservations.

Design
The design of the website is simplistic yet effective and functional. It is very user-friendly and also able to communicate its contents to the customers by classifying its contents in a very organized manner. The website also successfully highlights the interesting promotional offers and advertisements.

Privacy and Security
The privacy of this website when customers attempt to pay their bookings online is standard, one has to create an account and login to it to complete a booking. For security, payment will be made by credit card which is relatively safe since the website has a good reputation and frequently used by many travelers.

Strengths
Because of the simplicity of the design, it makes customers to easily understand what to do in the website, and this website offers user-friendliness so that the travelling customers are able to get what they want effectively. The other strength of Expedia website is that it effectively organizes their contents. The security is relatively safe and quite fast to complete the booking

Weaknesses
The first weakness is the list on the bottom part of the website (Expedia's Top Hotel Destinations) is quite important to tell the travelers about availability of good hotels, but if that section is placed at the bottomof the website, people might not be able to see it clearly so it would be better off if that section is placed where people can easily see it like example placing it on the sidebar. The second weakness is that the promotional packages should be designed to look more interesting, probably by using more animations rather than still images.

Conclusion
Judging from the above elements, the website is quite useful to suit the various travelers’ needs and also offers user-friendliness to new users. It is simple but conveys extensive information to its customers through its systematically organized design.