28 BCBuSineSS APRIL 2016 PHOTOS COURTESY OF EXPEDIA
A
t Expedia's new oce in Vancou-
ver, employees are encouraged to
write on the walls. "If it's shiny,
you can write on it," says Matthew
Eichhorst, president of Expedia CruiseShip-
Centers. "We try to really think about the tools
that everybody needs in the organization."
All employees have desks that can be adjusted
from sitting to standing, there are collabora-
tion spots throughout the open plan space,
and meeting rooms are wired for videocon-
ferencing with other locations. The north side
of the oce with views of Burrard Inlet and
the North Shore mountains is reserved for
common spaces, including the multipurpose
Marketplace found in all Expedia oces: "This
is an area for all the employees to come and get
away from their desk and kind of hang out."
Expedia moved into the aptly named
Oceanic Plaza on West Hastings near Burrard
in late 2015. The new oce is 28,497 square feet
over two –oors—almost triple the size of the
previous one just across the street. Since selling
to Expedia in 2007, the cruise ship centre has
expanded to about 150 travel agency franchise
locations in Canada and about 50 in the U.S.
(that's expected to increase to 200 in Canada
and 500 in the U.S. by 2020). Training and sup-
port for franchisees is handled by the Vancou-
ver oce, home to 143 employees across three
divisions: Expedia CruiseShipCenters, Expedia
Lodging and Expedia Worldwide Engineering.
The inspiration for the decor, designed by
U.S.-based Gensler, is West Coast land and sea.
The colour scheme changes from blue at the
front of the building to green at the back. Wood
relief maps on the walls opposite the eleva-
tor evoke ship's charts. Nautical references
are numerous: rope, portholes, wave motifs,
cleats. "They wanted life jackets, but we said,
'That's not the best thing for our industry,'"
says Eichhorst.
O f f i c e S p a c e
Sea Change
Bursting at the seams, Expedia
CruiseShipCenters found an office
three times the size (and fun)
by Felicity Stone
The Write
Stuff
Meeting
spaces
throughout
the office have
whiteboard
walls
