The Consolidation in the Online Travel Booking Space Over the Last Two Years

The online travel booking market is increasingly looking like the rest of the Web: Size, reach, and revenues are consolidating among few big players, and they are driving the spate of big acquisitions in the market.

The latest acquisition of Wotif by Expedia for $658 million is a continuum to the process that started couple of years ago.

The latest round of big stakes mergers and acquisitions arguably started in fall of 2012, when Priceline plunked down $1.8 billion for Kayak. Since then, the online booking market has become a two-horse race: Priceline Group vs. Expedia, as the rest of the old stalwarts like Travelocity and Orbitz, among others, have fallen way behind.

Add to that list HomeAway, TripAdvisor, and European consolidator eDreams Odigeo, and that rounds up the large acquirers in the online booking space in the last two years. Out of all of these, TripAdvisor is the outlier, having bought the most number of companies, but spent the least amount of money, focusing on tiny acquisitions.

We have collected the big four online travel acquirers — Priceline Group, Expedia Inc, HomeAway and TripAdvisor — and their acquisitions over the last two years — 2012-2014 — in a handy chart below: