Inside Expedia

The World’s Largest Online Travel Agency

Expedia’s Eight Trip Tips to Go Green 1.   Reduce excess baggage. Every pound counts. 2.  Combine trips to save money and time. 3.  Fly direct. 4.  Vacation near your home. 5.  Stay at a hotel near the airport. 6.  Take shuttles, busses and trains to airports. 7.   Fly coach. You’ll save more and it’s efficient. 8.   Rent a small or hybrid vehicle. By the Numbers •  More than 25 million travelers use Expedia.com every month. •  More than 6,100 people are employed by Expedia, Inc. worldwide. •  Expedia, Inc. averages 70 million unique visitors on its Web site every month. •  Last year, the company helped 26 million people find a room for the night. •  Last year, the company helped 22 million travelers get a seat on a plane. •  Hotels.com fields between 14 and 15 million phone calls a year. Goal: LEED Certification In order to achieve this high goal, Expedia, along with its building team and employees: •  Diverted 98 percent of construction waste from landfills. •  Utilize green power. •  Choose products with more than 20 percent of recycled content. •  Established a composting program in addition to its recycling program. •  Chose equipment and appliances (more than 90 percent) with Energy Star ratings.

The downtown building is tall, yet unassuming amongst the other high-rises under construction and those already dotting the ever-growing Bellevue skyline. But behind those walls of windows are travel marketers, technology developers and supplier relationship managers that are essentially opening doors to the world — for millions of travelers — every single day.

Welcome to Expedia — a company so well-branded you probably heard that familiar “dot com” refrain from its ads in your head just now. So how does a company go from being a Microsoft side project in the mid-’90s, to leaving the nest just a few years later, to becoming one of the biggest online travel agencies in the world, all in 12 years?

“We provide a great product that we are passionate about,” said CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who was born in Iran and raised in the suburbs of New York City. “It shows in all that our employees do.” He joked they “bleed blue.” The company’s signature colors are blue and yellow. Like Khosrowshahi, employees at Expedia are smart, young and eager — many are world travelers. Some of their photographs even adorn the walls, like the stunning close-up of a lion one employee captured on film during a safari adventure.

Expedia, Inc. is the only company that has successfully spun away from Microsoft and thrived on its own, said Kristin Graham, Expedia, Inc.’s director of internal communication. It has continued to grow at its headquarters in Bellevue, and now has 81 offices across the globe. The number of familiar brands under the Expedia, Inc. umbrella continues to multiply, and includes popular names like Hotwire.com and Hotels.com. Expedia has more than 2.4 million lines of database to keep track of flights, hotel rooms, build trips, and conduct daily price comparisons to offer customers the best rates around.

“And worldwide we’re still hiring,” Graham said. “We attract the top talent — bright minds. Here, we’re flexible. It’s a place to grow and be nurtured and an opportunity to play. I always say we are small, but mighty.”

planting eastside roots
Expedia left Microsoft in 1996. In 2001, USA Networks, known today as InterActiveCorp, or IAC, led by Barry Diller, bought a controlling stake in Expedia and bought the rest of it in 2002. In 2005, IAC separated into two publicly traded companies: Expedia, Inc. and IAC. Diller remains chairman and senior executive of both.

Expedia’s CEO Khosrowshahi formerly was the CFO at IAC before being asked to lead Expedia, Inc. The idea was exciting and he moved his family, which includes his 8-year-old daughter and his 4-year-old son, from New York to Seattle. “It brings the world to your doorstep,” he said of his company. “Ten years ago, traveling to Bali would be a mystery … people feel safer now, traveling further from home.”

Khosrowshahi loves the Northwest, although he also likes that he often is able to escape the rain for work-related travel. He admittedly has some local travel on his to-do list.

“I travel so much that when I’m not working here I’m a complete homebody. I like to walk the neighborhood,” he said.  “I’ve been to the South China Sea … but I haven’t been to Portland.”

Khosrowshahi and the Expedia “family” have been incredibly busy moving from their Factoria location to the downtown building, complete with energy-efficient everything, bamboo floors, lots of windows for natural light, low-VOC paint and more.

The building was a joint project from Interior Architects of Seattle, LMN Architects of Seattle and Turner Construction’s special projects division of Seattle. It was built with the goal of achieving LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) “silver” certification. LEED is one of the highest “green” standards awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council. Few commercial buildings in the Northwest have earned the distinction, according to Mark Nagle, Expedia’s vice-president of real estate.

There are 20 floors in the building, and Expedia is on floors 3 to 18, taking up about 350,000-square-feet. On the bottom floors are a Thai restaurant and a coffee shop. Pokemon is on the 19th floor, and Nortel rents the 20th.

Office space was designed based largely on employee surveys and focus groups — everything from office acoustics to visual privacy were addressed. They literally tried out several chairs and picked Mirra chairs from Herman Miller, Inc. because seating was so important. The desks easily adjust to any height, allowing employees to sit or stand. Some folks have file cabinets on wheels with cushioned seating on top that double as a mobile seat for impromptu “cube” meetings. Business Interiors NW provided most of the furniture for the building.

There are two “hoteling” stations on every floor, complete with desks, chairs and plug-ins to accommodate visitors, remote workers who randomly drop-in and contractors. Each floor has its own conference room, too.

“We like to call this our grown-up building,” Graham said. “We have a 10-year lease … we’re truly invested here and we were involved with the building from the ground up.” Expedia moved into its new location on 108th Avenue N.E. in November and recently was awarded the “Best Move” honor from the Downtown Bellevue Association. 

nerds and proud of it
A rubber chicken sits atop a cubicle wall next to Gumby, Pokey and a severed toy hand. A tiny disco ball hangs from the ceiling and sparkles from light filtering through a large wall of windows nearby.

This isn’t a typical, stuffy business environment.

“We have a suit-and-tie intellect, with a jeans atmosphere,” Graham said.

Travel is Expedia’s business and it is obvious. Each floor has its own theme and color palette based on different latitudes of the Earth, which were chosen by the employees on each floor. The 11th floor, the main reception area, is known as the equator. From warm beach themes and hula dancer dolls on one floor to the chilly ice-blue area of Antarctica, each stop on the elevator is like a travel adventure.

And personalities shine through. The floor that houses Egencia, the corporate travel division, has a brown palette. Those folks tend to be wearing suits and sport jackets, not jeans. “Some people said brown was boring, but we think it’s classy,” an employee said while exiting the elevator to that floor.

“The hearts and minds are the people and in the halls, and on the walls it’s reflected,” Graham said. From adopt-a-dog fliers, to carpooling friend requests, to photos of the Expedia team building structures out of canned food for a recent food drive competition, it is clear Expedia is different.

When the CEO calls a meeting, it is usually at Sandwich Islands, aka, the cafeteria. It isn’t uncommon for groups to gather and crack open a cold one while going over business. If they prefer to listen and watch from their desks, that’s OK, too. The entire place is wired so meetings can easily be broadcasted throughout the building, eliminating the need for one enormous conference area.

There are a lot of soda machines, Starbucks coffeemakers and other beverages on every floor, all for free. There’s a sundeck with Adirondack chairs for folks to lounge at work.

Employees are charged $75 if they want to park in the garage. But if they don’t park, they get paid $75. Expedia also offers free bus passes and it’s estimated that 50 percent of the employees don’t drive to work because of these benefits. The half-empty garage was testimony to that and there is a flex car for people who need to drive to an appointment during work hours.
 
And they don’t just recycle at Expedia, they compost, too. These all were important things to the employees, Nagle said. “We’re a collaborative company. If people buy into that at the outset, then people end up liking the outcome.”

One thing the employees really wanted was a game room and they got it, complete with foosball, “Guitar Hero,” “Dance-Dance Revolution” and ping pong. Daniel Kissin, business analyst of air strategy, was on an advisory group that championed for a game room. “It improves morale and is a great stress outlet,” he said.   
“For five or 10 minutes you play, chat and avoid burnout.”

Another benefit of the new building is the park-like space in back. It’s linked to the street and the rest of the downtown community by stairs. Expedia hopes to get to know its neighbors better this summer by hosting concerts and other fun events there, like food and wine tastings. “We want to be the cool company in downtown Bellevue,” Graham said. “Actually we are. And we want to invite the community to come and play with us.”

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