According to Tariq Janmohamed, Expedia's senior director – new businesses, the average response time for quotes has been reduced from five hours to 14 minutes, going by the experience of Best Western Central, the first global chain in Germany with more than 300 hotels to tie up with the technology last year. "The current process is manual, inefficient with static prices, no revenue management for meeting rooms, and no adjustments for seasonality. Throw in changing customer expectations – their digital impatience – and our research shows there's a problem with the current process and just how big this industry is," he said, in a press briefing in Singapore on Monday. Expedia is lusting after the prospect of 60 million events per annum globally worth US$400 billion. "The majority of meetings are small, i.e. less than 25 people, typically taking place in hotels. There has to be a better way to organise this," he added.