Priceline Buying HomeAway Is the Big 'What If' in Online Travel
Skift Take
Priceline could execute an expensive acquisition of HomeAway if it wants to, and is in a better position to do so than Expedia or any other travel brand.
HomeAway CEO Brian Sharples was talking to investors at a Citi Internet conference in Las Vegas in January about how his company intends to crack down on vacation rental owners who hijack customers and deal with them directly.
And, then he name-dropped that Jeffery Boyd, the outgoing Priceline CEO and current board chairman, told Sharples that its Booking.com unit at times has to deal with the same sort of gamesmanship.
“Booking.com has a very similar thing with hotels," Sharples said. "Booking.com is just acting as an agent. And the hotels do have opportunities to play all sorts of games. But what Jeff Boyd tells me is they are not going to do that because they are so dependent on Booking.com."
In the online hotel business, a much-speculated-about and potential Priceline acquisition of HomeAway would be an even more dramatic development than Priceline's $1.8 billion of Kayak last year.
Sharples and Boyd had obviously been talking, and they were seen chatting it up together at the PhoCusWright conference in November. These sorts of things are routine, and although they might feed the imaginations of conspiracy buffs, such dialogue in itself doesn't mean much.
Still, if Priceline hasn't at least taken a look at acquiring HomeAway, given the major push that Booking.com has made over the last couple of years in vacation rentals, then someone should sue Priceline'
