What Happens to the Travelocity Brand Under Expedia Ownership?
Skift Take
The Roaming Gnome himself whispers to us that he is very happy about the Expedia acquisition of Travelocity. It was touch and go under Sabre ownership for such a long time as Sabre, with priorities elsewhere, totally bungled ownership of Travelocity and Lastminute.com.
Now that Expedia Inc. owns Travelocity, how much love is Expedia going to give to the Travelocity brand?
One of the key reasons that Expedia acquired Travelocity outright, after powering Travelocity.com and Travelocity.ca since signing a 2013 marketing agreement, is that while Expedia ran much of the Travelocity operation behind the scenes, Travelocity still did its own marketing and Expedia had no control over it, and little visibility into what kind of resources Travelocity would put into the marketing effort.
Now Expedia gets to control Travelocity all the way, including its marketing activities.
So Now What?
Expedia has expressed a commitment to retaining the Travelocity brand, so it will take its place among Expedia Inc.'s other consumer brands, including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Trivago, Venere, eLong, and CarRentals.com, among others. Expedia Inc. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and team showed off the acquisition's spoils on Twitter on Friday, the day the deal went down.
My @roaminggnome is proudly on display today as @travel
