Global travel giant Expedia has moved into a new 28,000-square-foot office in the Oceanic Plaza building on West Hastings Street, nearly triple the 10,000 square feet that it had occupied across the street, in the Guinness Tower.
The company bases 143 staff in the office now although Expedia CruiseShipCenters (ECSC) president Matthew Eichhorst told Business in Vancouver December 2 that the Vancouver site can accommodate 250 employees.
Hiring is ongoing.
The ECSC division of the global travel giant was founded in Vancouver in 1987. Expedia bought the venture in 2007 and continued to base its North American cruise line division in Vancouver. Since then, Eichhorst said, growth at ECSC has been “phenomenal” and it is now a venture that generates more than $700 million in bookings, through franchisees, annually.
“We have about 150 franchisees in Canada and 50 in the U.S.,” said Eichhorst, who is a former Business in Vancouver Forty under 40 winner. “By 2020, we’ll have 500 franchisees total with about 300 in the U.S. and 200 in Canada. So, it’s 33% growth in the next five years in Canada but significantly higher growth in the U.S.”
ECSC franchisees operate storefront locations. They are also steered customers who book online via their postal codes.
“All Expedia cruise sales for Canada go through one of our 150 offices,” Eichhorst explained.
Franchisees pay a $39,000 one-time fee and then an ongoing 9% royalty out of the commissions made on cruise, hotel and other sales.
“We have a discovery day tomorrow (December 3) where we have 10 new franchise partner prospects coming in,” Eichhorst said. “We award franchises to about 75% to 80% of the people who get to this stage. So, seven or eight of them will be awarded franchises subject to financing.”
In addition to the 104 employees at the new office who work for ECSC, another 24 staff work for Expedia Lodging Partner Services, which is the group that finds new hotels to put on the websites of Expedia’s dozen or so well-known brands, such as Trivago, Hotels.com or Orbitz.
(Image: The kitchen of the new Expedia office has a nautical-themed kitchen fitting given that the company's headquarters for Expedia CruiseShipCenters is in Vancouver | Glen Korstrom)
The other 15 people are part of Expedia’s Expedia Worldwide Engineering division. Some of those people service technology needs for the company’s worldwide headquarters in Bellevue, Washington.
Expedia (Nasdaq:EXPE) generated US$50.45 billion in gross bookings in the 2014 calendar year although 2015 bookings are expected to be substantially higher because of organic growth and the fact that the company closed a deal in September to buy Orbitz Worldwide for US$1.6 billion.
Orbitz owns brands such as ebookers, Cheap Tickets and Away Network.
