2015 › November

TV advertising by online travel agencies has been very much in vogue over the last couple of years. But TripAdvisor decided it doesn't need it for now and instead is going to take its new partnership with Booking.com and run with that instead.

Wall Street is buying up HomeAway's stock with the thinking that a new bidding war with Expedia could take hold, but that's unlikely. From HomeAway CEO Brian Sharples' comments, it seems likely that some kind of sales process -- and obviously a serious vetting of the deal -- already took place.

These are the newest travel startups from AngelList vying for travelers’ interest and investors’ attention.

For financial, online travel nerds and human resources nerds, here's all the fine print that's seen the light of day so far about then Expedia-HomeAway merger.

If you have a company with multiple product lines and consumer strategies, you want a chairman like Barry Diller to have your back.

Airports are never easy to work with and require cutting through red tape longer than any distance a traveler can drive in a Turo rental. Focusing on connecting travelers with cars outside the airport environment introduces more personality into the company and allows it to better compete with ride-hailing app giants like Uber.

No one has been pushing for hotel groups to develop better meetings industry content than Skift. While Connect+ is an impressive move by Hilton in that regard, there's a lot of opportunity here for more authentic content and intuitive content delivery.

Virgin's unique position comes with its own challenges, but it also allows the airline to go it alone when necessary, confident its relationship with its best passengers will help it out.

It's all about scale for Expedia. The company can use its expertise to add vacation rentals to heighten conversion, which in turn enables Expedia to spend more on marketing. That's good for vacation rentals and, in theory, for hotels as well as it should generate increased demand.