Expedia Private Label goes mobile, social advertising profitable

Expedia is taking its private label business mobile.

Speaking at the G7: ThinkEquity 7th Annual Growth Conference in Manahattan Sept. 15, Expedia President and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Expedia is investing in a mobile tools that would enable developers to build applications to sell Expedia inventory on a private-label basis.

“Let the world innovate and let us provide the supply, availability and pricing for the world to innovate on top of,” Khosrowshahi said.

He looks for “explosive innovation” in the mobile arena and wants Expedia to provide the tools for companies to “very quickly, very easily” build apps using the company’s inventory.

Khosrowshahi pointed to the HotelsByMe iPhone app as an incredible app, which was built using Expedia’s private label mobile tools.

There was plenty of Expedia Inc. news on the social media front, as well.

Khosrowshahi said Expedia for several years has invested in advertising on social media sites and never made any money on it.

However, although the dollars still are relatively small, that social media advertising, thanks to targeting and other technologies used by sites like Facebook, is now becoming profitable, he said.

“We think opening that new channel is positive for us,” Khosrowshahi said.

Khosrowshahi noted that Expedia has been investing in social media, particularly through TripAdvisor’s Cities I’ve visited Facebook app.

He indicated that consumers have placed more than 1 billion pins on Cities I’ve Visited maps, which enable friends to query people in their networks about trip recommendations.

“We think this integation of the masses along with your social graph is something that’s incredibly powerful and creates a huge amount of sticky value for TripAdvisor,” Khosrowshahi said.

In other developments, Expedia Inc. CFO Michael Adler, who also participated in the ThinkEquity conference, said the company’s corporate travel business, Egencia, has become profitable and may be at a stage in its growth where it can absorb an acquisition.

Adler repeated Expedia statements of recent years that the company generally is open to small acquisitions that would expand markets or boost’s TripAdvisor’s media business.

Expedia recently closed on a $750 million debt offering and part of the proceeds could be used for mergers and acquisitions.

In another development, Expedia Inc. recently increased its stake in eLong to 60% and prefers to keep the ownership structure as is for now so eLong will be continued to be perceived as a local Chinese company, Adler said.