Expedia News

An outsider might think the U.S. online travel market is already saturated, but Booking.com is proving that there is plenty of room to grow in the U.S., and competitors are feeling the heat.

This current version of the Expedia-HomeAway vacation rental beta functions more like an advertising relationship would than a tightly integrated booking process. These are very early days for the partnership, and what you see undoubtedly won't be the finished product.

Expedia Inc. takes a somewhat narrow definition in claiming to be the "world's largest travel site" in its latest ad campaign, and might get an argument on that score from its offspring, TripAdvisor.

As Expedia CFO Mark Okerstrom said the other day, "scale begets scale." Orbitz's modest 15% growth in room nights in the fourth quarter partially reflects the lack thereof.

Was the Expedia-Travelocity deal just a harbinger of things to come? Expedia thinks so and is looking for additional online travel agency partners who would consider outsourcing the hard stuff to Expedia.

Expedia has been the most aggressive big travel band in corralling travel bloggers, and although their proselytizing can at times be clumsy, it has mostly been very effective.

Want to gauge Expedia's priorities? It implemented its hotel partnership with Travelocity in a hurry in December. But when it comes to rolling out HomeAway's vacation rentals, Expedia says it will get around to deciding how to proceed in the second half of 2014.

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

Kudos to the European Union for ensuring that Google doesn't wield its market power with excessive advantage in promoting its own services. The U.S. FTC's decision to avoid taking similar actions is a regulatory blemish, although the EU agreement could put more pressure on the FTC to take another look at these issues.

Business travelers have always clamored for websites and apps that are as functional as those for leisure travelers. As testament to the further blending of business and leisure travel, Egencia is offering mobile-only hotel deals to satisfy the last-minute whims of road warriors.