Expedia Stumbled After Its Radical Approach to Integrating Orbitz
Skift Take
Breaking up is hard to do but when it comes to mergers, the stakes can be very high and the challenges acutely complex. It's really hard to find someone who will argue that Expedia's acquisition spree will be its undoing but success will take focus and certainly isn't guaranteed.
Expedia Inc. bet big on how to tackle its integration of Orbitz Worldwide, acquired in September 2015, as it took the radical step of reassigning the bulk of the Expedia.com tech and product teams to work on the task of on-boarding Orbitz and its multiple brands.
But Expedia, which has become fairly skilled at integration grunt work since 2010, found out the hard way, as disclosed last week in its second quarter earnings announcement, that bolting Orbitz Worldwide — including Orbitz, eBookers, Orbitz For Business and the Orbitz Partner Network — onto Expedia platforms would be far more difficult than integrating Travelocity, which was likewise part of the Expedia shopping spree at the beginning of 2015.
The complexities of all those major acquisitions —including Wotif, Auto Escape Group, Travelocity, Orbitz Worldwide and HomeAway — within an 18-month span from July 2014 to December 2015 may have finally caught up with Expedia.
The issue is whether the pace of the dece
