Travel Industry Earnings Coverage

Priceline outlasted Expedia in the room-night growth arms race, posting 32% growth to Expedia's 24%. Although there was a slight dent in the armor, as Priceline room-night growth was slightly faster a year earlier.

Travelocity talked years ago about getting into the advertising and media business in a big way, but never made it happen. But, now Expedia has grand plans to use Travelocity's North America sites as a platform to expanding Expedia's own advertising and media business in tandem with the jolt that Trivago is already providing.

With 1,000 customers signed up for its open-booking platform, and 5,000 new clients enrolled in all its products over the last year, Concur is getting increasingly mainstream in the corporate travel industry. That's a challenge for establishment companies such as American Express, Carlson Wagonlit Travel and BCD, which must pay heed to the insurgent.

HomeAway is not about to be another Booking.com, but Google is going to get a new and large global customer when the vacation rental site ramps up its search engine marketing, probably next year.

Kjos and Norwegian's backers are making a big bet that they can disrupt trans-Atlantic traffic. You need a bit of chutzpah to make that happen.

Perhaps Virgin America can build on this good year and begin adding more cities to its stingy route map.

Orbitz will feel the most pain from the end of its exclusive relationship with Kayak, and will try to make up for it by forging new relationships with other metasearch players around the world.

Expedia's hotel business has momentum, and the acquisition of Trivago and its strategic marketing agreement with Travelocity are fueling the trend.

Increased advertising, lowering cruise prices and trying to win back the hearts and minds of travel agents have been key to Carnival's brand-rebuilding efforts. Advanced bookings for 2014, even though they are on par with last year's lower pricing, have been sluggish, pointing to the challenges ahead for Carnival.

The changing of the guard is now official -- in more ways than one.