Booking Holdings

Arguments can be made for a number of sides, but the truth is there's no true winner or loser here, if we're being totally honest.

Traveloka is going after a slice of the Australian online travel market. That's brave. Even though the market is robust, the space is highly competitive. While Indonesia is popular among Australians, travelers still mainly prefer Bali, which is like their backyard. So what has Traveloka to offer?

Airbnb to Booking: "Yeah, right."

Kayak is looking to get leaner and more efficient. The restructuring, though, doesn't exactly mesh with the upbeat picture about the metasearch company that parent Booking Holdings described during its fourth-quarter earnings call this week.

Airbnb has dominated the discussion of alternative accommodations, but it appears as though Booking Holdings' apartment-rental business may be in a dead heat with its competitor. Airbnb's perceived lead may not be as great as many observers believe.

The fact that Booking Holdings and Expedia Group are leaning away from TripAdvisor is a wake-up call for many metasearch sites. However, travelers still love to use the damn things for comparison shopping, so there's that.

In a rush to scale, consolidated travel companies find themselves with outsized market share that often leads to muscling consumers to their advantage. With no good alternatives, how will travelers react to the pressure?

Expedia is an opportunistic company, and mergers and acquisitions are part of its DNA. The company has been quiet on this front for the past three years. It is sort of due to make another big splash.

Online travel agencies will be around a decade from now, but food, activities, and rides will be a lot more important to them and their customers. The saplings of this future growth are already visible in 2019.

Understandably, Expedia and Booking are both trying to spin this in their favor as much as possible but it seems like a big win for the UK's competition regulator. We'll have to keep an eye on how much it really changes things and whether other countries follow up.