Expedia India to power MSN Travel!

Expedia.co.in, world's largest online travel company, today announced its partnership with MSN India to power the latter's travel section. The partnership aims to offer MSN India users with access to Expedia's comprehensive inventory of travel products, including hotels, flights, cars and holiday packages. Expedia features more than 130,000 hotels, 430 airline partnerships and over 5000 holiday activities. MSN India users can now read thousands of independent reviews from fellow travelers and use travel-simplifying features such as maps, weather forecasts and 360 degree virtual tours of hotels through Expedia.

MSN India will provide a link on the navigation bar, titled "Travel," which will open up a co-branded travel section with MSN Travel logo. "Powered By Expedia" the page will have the look and feel of current Expedia homepage. Additionally, MSN will also provide an Expedia Branded Travel Search Wizard on its homepage which will send the visitor directly to Expedia website. Expedia will service all transactions resulting out of the travel channel.

According to Daniel Lynn, Vice President and Managing Director, Expedia Asia-Pacific, "We believe the Indian traveler can benefit immensely from the global experience and widest choice that Expedia has to offer. This partnership is a very important step in our endeavour to move even closer to the Indian consumer. Going forward, we will continue to make key investments that help us develop localized travel products as well as gain greater access to Indian travelers."

According to the Third Edition of the PhoCusWright Indian Online travel overview published in September 2010, the Indian travel marketplace totaled $15.8 billion and online leisure/ unmanaged business travel accounted for 21.1% or approximately $3.3 billion in 2009. By 2012, nearly one-third of the travel industry gross bookings are likely to be completed online. Additionally, the Indian travel market is expected to grow by 12% to $17.7 billion in 2010, reaching $22.8 billion by 2012 representing an impressive 44% growth between 2009 and 2012. With this tie-up with MSN, Expedia.co.in plans to tap into this burgeoning market and cater to the specific requirements emerging out of India

According to Sanjay Trehan, Head, MSN India, Consumer & Online Business, Microsoft India Pvt. Ltd. "Expedia is undoubtedly one of the world's leading online travel sites and we are very happy to partner with them. With this association, we are taking the consumer experience to a whole new level by positioning MSN travel as the complete travel guide in terms of searches, bookings, ticketing & reservations with the best in the business."

Expedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE), the world's largest online travel company, operates Expedia.co.in (https://www.expedia.co.in/) in India. Expedia.co.in provides Indian consumers with a distinctive suite of travel solutions comprising a wide selection of holidays, destination attractions, flights, hotels and car rentals supported by a 24x7 call centre. With products like "Build your trip' consumers not only have the freedom to create their own packages but also receive the best discounts on creating packages from Expedia's inventory of hotels, travel activities and car.

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