Expedia Flashcards
Data and technical skills - examples
Summary: used data to provide actionable insights, drive improvements in business and formulate business strategies
- identify trends, predict, visualise
- communicate to stakeholders
- hyp test
- collect and integrate diff data sources
- strong analytical ability
Reasonable assumptions: data → actionable insights - help drive improvements for customers, business and operations
- stats, R and Python
example projects
- Viz: developing group project to communicate the quick spread and dissemination of fake news - interactive infographic
- Predictions : Data transformation and analysis used real life dataset to build logistic regression model to predict customer purchasing patterns
Collection and integration of different data sources: E.g. history used range of datatypes - assimilation and analysis
Hypothesis test - AB testing through analytical rigor
Another component - rewarding - the optimisation and simplification of both complex problems + mundane tasks
Example: ran a hypothesis test for change in M&S’ revenue through Sept. partnership w/ OCado - determine whether revenue statistically significantly different → result: yes, different
Strong analytical skills
e.g.: honed in undergrad and masters
A degree in history taught me to rapidly synthesis and critically analyse vast amount of information
+ numerical forms in masters
Other skills
Critical Analysis
History degree - rapidly synthesis and critically analyse vast amount of information
E.g. dissertation, a critical analysis of the mistreatment of mixed raced children after WWII, used both quant and qual sources to map the racial, social and political landscape that led to the discrimination of a racial minority
Self-motivation
e. g.: marketing analytics built logistic regression model using real life dataset to predict customer purchasing patterns
- use R and Python to produce data visualization to confirm and develop own understanding of the model
Work under pressure and tight deadlines
e.g. diss/Mishcon/other project - emergence of new info/dataset late on - motivated to produce best + most comprehensive version of events - worked over time to include - worth it…
e.g.2: tutoring, new pupil last min - used as teaching opportunity
Interpersonal skills: collaborative + effective communication
What does Expedia do?
One of largest global travel platform, two sided market place - provide and build travel products and services
Services inc. flight tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, vacation packages
How? using industry knowledge and tech innovation
Clients: Travelers and partners find best pathway through numerous possibilities
History
In 2018, Expedia Inc. became Expedia Group - working together, across countries, teams and brands
Brands inc. Expedia Partner Solutions + a no. of other Expedia named brands, Trivago, CarRentals. com
Why do you want to work in the travel sector?
Data analyst - solving complex problems in innovative ways, optimising systems for customers and colleagues
- travel epitomises this - both as the industry recovers from 2020 and will have to find new ways to operate
+ as an individual and own experiences struggling w/ travel - e.g. cancellations, inundated w/ choice + love of travel - e.g. Gap Year
Working as a data analyst offers opportunity to genuinely make significant impact in both travel industry and consumers and companies’ experience of travelling and holidays
What recent news have you read about expedia? Market position
Example: FT discussing the changes to business travel and how it is returning, with a new corporate social responsibility agenda
Interesting - reflective of changing trends under COVID to incr. social and env responsibility
Support for companies who strongly supported employees through furlough or ran not for profit schemes - e.g. supplying food to NHS workers
Link: Expedia’s emphasis on both social and corporate responsibility + diverse and inclusive workforce is a real standout
Towards end of last year:
World Tourism Org signed deal to work alongside Expedia group to strengthen ties between public and private tourism sectors
market position: travellers 57% more likely to book travel through an Online Travel Agency
- best nightly rates, rooms, one location
- more certainty, get comparisons, offers
What recent news have you read about travel sector?
Been followugn news on quarantine hotels - rise in hotel stocks as UK arrivals forced to pay to quarentine
What does Expedia’s technology do/involve?
Expedia made huge investments in data analytics and visualisation - to create perosnalised recommendations
Aim: show information and results that are personalised and relevant before customer asked for it
How? Collected data from users, categorised, create buckets and travel graph
Range of services
From API building blocks to front-end interfaces
Provides Travel API customised solutions for business partners + readybuilt booking technology
Aimed at incr. quality and breadth of customer offering
E.g. EPS Rapid - quick light API to customise hotel books end-to-end
Travel trends for 2021: How do you anticipate COVID has and will affect travel industry
Changes to consumer demand:
e.g. shorthaul, local/domestic, OTA use, familiar places and brands, pent-up demand, outdoors and late bookings
Stock market optimistic
- After stocks plummeting in 2020 - e.g. GPS - 20% decline in revenue to end of Oct, by dec 2020 had returned 22.8% by beginning of Dec
2 key advantages of Expedia
- known brand - ppl more likely to go for familiar choice
- existing infrastrcture for tech and data-driven business strategies, esp. crucial
For Expedia - challenge will be adapting to changing market, changing customer demand and requirements - why data analytics so valuable
- already doing so - with extension of Expedia’s TAAP package - TAAP partners able to offer avg 20% discount on accomodation
Who are Expedia’s clients
What i find so interesting is the wealth of client’s Expedia has
General consumers and individuals
24m active Expedia Rewards members across 32 countries
B2B clients - through Expedia partner solutions
Customised solutions from TRavel API
E.g. helped North American loyalty partner by surfacing relevant content using ML
- data analyst - interesting fusion between technical and industry knowledge - have to understand travel sector and company to provide tailored recommendations using complex computational and statistical methods
Note: travel API: set of web services used to access travel data from different sources, fetch and process travel data
Note: API - software intermediary that allows 2 applications ot talk to each other
Examples: Andrew Jones travel, Jetmar, World Explorer, Juniper
Who are expedia’s competitors
main competitor: Boooking.com
+ AirBnB, Tripadvisor
How is expedia different? Expedia partner solutions - providing tech for other travel firms is what really stands out
How are expedia and booking.com similar?
revenue streams: agency, merhcant, adverts
Why expedia?
Working environment
Diverse, inclusive, collaborative - working in team projects, I have really understood the value in diversity of experiences, skills and opinions, and Expedia’s emphasis on the whole international group acting as one is v. appealing - huge value in knowledge sharing throughout org -
Inc. Expedia Corp Responsibility, through expedia cares - bring in Mishcon
Expedia investment in tech - clearly Expedia understand value in data-driven solutions…
Sector and role: Data analyst - solving complex problems in innovative ways, optimising systems for customers and colleagues -
- travel epitomises this - both as the industry recovers from 2020 and will have to find new ways to operate
+ as an individual and own experiences struggling w/ travel - e.g. cancellations, inundated w/ choice + love of travel - e.g. Gap Year
Working as a graduate data analyst at Expedia offers opportunity to genuinely make significant impact - improving customer experience and optimising Expedia and client’s business performance - both use and understand data and communicate that to colleagues and clients
E.g. using data to produce Tableau analysis
Why do you want to work in the travel sector?
Data analyst - solving complex problems in innovative ways, optimising systems for customers and colleagues
- using advanced computational and statistical methods for real-world probs
- travel sector, esp as the nature of it is evolving through recovery from COVID - huge value in drawing trends and predictions through data-driven approach
+ as individual, understand challenges, and joy that comes w/ travel - benefit of ease of using - from booking, to travelling to the stay
- offers opportunity to make genuine significant impact to Expedia, clients and travel sector
How is data analytics used in the travel sector?
Summary:
Customer data inc. users data collected through Travel APIs, social media - app. of ML and AI
- e.g. personalised recs, packages
- e.g. ease of use inc. self-service
- e.g. optimising operations - reduce costs, incr. profit and revenue
- e.g. automating pricing strategies
What is the process of working with data
Understand and define business problem trying to solve
e.g. understand and provide recommednation on customer retention rates
Identify and collect data
e.g. used AWS dataset
Prep and transform data - doing data viz throughout to test and corroborate understanding
e.g. missing values, unbalaanced and non-standardised/normalised data, transform into numerical form
Gain insights - from implementing ML algorithms for predictive analytics or to produce comprehensive reports
e.g. implement
Summarise and synthesise findings
Challenges faced when working with data - what I have learnt and what I would do differently
Failing to do visualisations
towards the end of the project I wanted to visualise work that had been done - logistic regression vs. other models - wanted to see comparison of how implementing ML algorithms improved customer retention - without doing a model, looking at a spreadsheet of numbers meant vl. little
Learnt that part of iterative process to visualise data, check understanding and assumptions and gain insight into patterns that were not apparent
Waiting on specific dataset - inaccessible and poor quality data
Group project - found alternative source - too late on - worked overtime - motivated to produce comprehensive report
Failing to understand context of the data - data analyst require both coding specific and subject specific knowledge - insights are not valuable unless you understand their implications
Coding project to predict sales for Walmart in US and produce recommendations on marketing strategy - some stores had hugely more sales - I wanted to corroborate our findings, with some research found that may be due to being a store in city centre - changed suggegstiojs for marketing strategy
