You see one of the key reasons people travel is to discover a new romance. So if Facebook has become the place to discover romance for the SoMe generation why not monetize that opportunity by encouraging them to book their romantic getaway through Facebook?
Take a look at Expedia. Its collection of travel related web sites (think Hotels.com, Expedia.com and Tripadvisor.com) attracts about 23.5 Million uniques per month. More importantly Expedia ended the year with revenues of $3.24 Billion (about double those recently estimated for Facebook). That’s a healthy ARPU of $100 per unique (about 35x that of Facebook’s estimated 2010 ARPU of $2.86).
Even if Facebook merely replicated Expedia’s online travel business it would increase its revenues three-fold.
The problem with the idea of course is Expedia’s market cap is less than 1/10th of Facebook’s recent valuation by Goldman Sachs. So announcing that you are going to become the next Expedia probably isn’t what Wall St wants to hear right now. But if it could become the romantic travel planning and booking platform for the 600+ Million Facebook users then chances are it could become, who knows, 10 times bigger than Expedia? Maybe on a par with Google?
Now that would be a revenue engine capable of making Wall St very excited.
Posted on January 25, 2011
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