Expedia News

It's tough for a European brand to really take hold in the U.S. -- or vice versa -- but Trivago is on the way to doing it.

Don't pine for Stephen Kaufer about his CEO pay in 2014. He'll be OK, especially if TripAdvisor hands out those $100 holiday gift cards as employee bonuses again this year. Meanwhile, if everything gets on track with Hotel Shopper, he'll have a big payday again in 2017.

Baseball's N.Y. Yankees had its "core four" of Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and Mariano Rivera. And Expedia has its own core four, namely Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Trivago, and Egencia as the foundation for global growth and the plan is to add regional acquisitions around the edges.

These are fun to look back on and see how travel desktop pages have changed, but apps and mobile sites are increasingly being used to plan and book travel making those almost more important than the fancy desktop redesigns.

The online travel agencies have lots of competitive advantages over hotels and the sales tax disparity is one of them.

Expedia and Priceline are throwing a ton of money into marketing through TripAdvisor but rest assured they will be looking to reduce their reliance on TripAdvisor as soon as feasible. After all, that is one of the reasons Expedia acquired Trivago and Priceline bought Kayak.

Barring a reversal in market conditions, buckle up because 2015 is looking like it will be a very active year in mergers and acquisitions among online travel companies.

Travel tricks coming soon to a wrist near you.

The online travel duopoly, The Priceline Group and Expedia Inc., remains in place. But as history and Expedia's turnaround show, the pecking order isn't necessarily going to stay this way over the long term.

It looks like the Priceline Group's Darren Huston doth protest too much and is feeling the pressure generated by Expedia Inc.'s acquisition strategy.