Top 10 Booking Site Sales Rankings Remain Remarkably Stable in 2013
Skift Take
Business travel-oriented companies, including American Express, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, BCD Travel and HRG, are not as large as leisure-oriented Expedia and Priceline, but the business travel agencies are entrenched near the top of the heap, and they aren't going anywhere in the short term.
Despite all of the merger and acquisition activity and changing alliances in travel over the last year, rankings of the top ten booking sites and companies that did at least 15% of their business in the U.S. in 2013 remained remarkably stable.
Examining the top ten booking companies by their sales, or gross bookings, in 2013, Expedia Inc. hung on and barely edged out the Priceline Group for the first-place position, although Priceline moved up to second place, growing its sales 37.5% to $39.2 billion, displacing American Express, which fell to third from the second slot in 2012.
Among the Top 10, the only booking company that came close to the Priceline Group's growth pace was Fareportal, which operates CheapOair. Fareportal's gross bookings climbed 37.2% to $3.5 billion in 2013 compared with the previous year.
Apart from the Priceline Group and American Express, which got hit by a downsizing push in 2013, swapping positions, and Fareportal moving into the Top 10 from the #11 slot a year earlier, the remaining top ten by 2013 sales, namely Carlson Wagonlit
