American Express, BCD Travel and Carlson Wagonlit Travel all have recently announced personnel cost-saving initiatives. Speaking last week with analysts during the company's third-quarter earnings conference call, Expedia executives said they haven't gone that far just yet. "The first area that we’re looking at and we think the biggest area of opportunity for us is in the non-people cost," said CEO and president Dara Khosrowshahi. "It’s in the variable costs, etc. I think it’s really important for a company like ours right now to focus on execution on a lot of the projects that we’ve been investing in--the technology projects, etc.--and bringing those through. I think we’re going to see where volumes come out. We are in an incredibly volatile time and based on where volumes and ’09 numbers are coming out, we’ll look at all costs including people costs, as well. But we’re just not there yet."
Meanwhile, Khosrowshahi noted that labor savings already are underway as the company reduces "cost per call" using "a new agent desktop that we’ve introduced that we’ve built over the past 18 months."
