Expedia hopes to launch a UAE version of its website within two years, as the internet travel company targets growth in the region's online tourism market.
As yet, Expedia does not have a website in Arabic.
"It is imminent," said Hari Nair, the vice president of market management at Expedia. "We don't have an Expedia.ae site yet. We will have an Arabic site."
The company already has an Arabic version of its hotel booking website for the region.
"We're learning about the business, about this region through our hotels.com site and eventually when we're ready to come with a localised version of the Expedia site we will be able to implement that, which is anywhere between 18 to 24 months away," said Mr Nair.
"On the hotels.com side of things it is a regional website. It is not a site that is specifically for the UAE. The Expedia side of the business we've already worked differently - we've not had a regional site; we've had a country specific site … so we'll probably have a site for the UAE that talks directly to the consumers living in the UAE."
He said, for example, this would have the advantage of allowing local consumers to make their purchases in dirhams. The company would launch the local site in both Arabic and English.
Euromonitor International said there was potential for growth in the online travel sector in the Middle East, which is lagging in development because internet access remains low in the region and there is a lack of confidence in making payments online.
"The Middle East is one of the world's growing tourism destinations and source markets," said Nadejda Popova, a travel and tourism analyst at Euromonitor.
"This growth is replicated online over the next five years with web sales across both air travel and accommodation increasing dramatically."
The number of air ticket sales in the region through online channels is expected to increase from 10 per cent last year to 14 per cent by 2015, according to the research firm.
In North America, it says the online market is saturated and the percentage of air-ticket sales made over the internet is expected to remain at 57 per cent over the next four years.
But, in the Middle East, growth is forecast as "internet availability becomes more mainstream and online booking sites increase in number and reliability", Euromonitor said.
Mr Nair said its hotels.com website was experiencing "massive growth [in bookings] on a year-on-year basis, both on the Arabic and the English site".
"We are very optimistic."
