Expedia News

The Roaming Gnome himself whispers to us that he is very happy about the Expedia acquisition of Travelocity. It was touch and go under Sabre ownership for such a long time as Sabre, with priorities elsewhere, totally bungled ownership of Travelocity and Lastminute.com.

Expedia is expected to retain the Travelocity brand. It would be foolish not to because the whole value proposition is to tap into the allegiances of Travelocity loyalists. And that leaves Orbitz out in the cold. It is unable to achieve scale and Expedia and the Priceline Group are apparently not interested in scooping Orbitz up.

Orbitz Worldwide is putting itself up for sale, and the leak to Bloomberg may be a signal that the bidding hasn't been particularly robust to date.

It is interesting that Expedia touts the new feedback tool for hoteliers as a way to discourage negative reviews instead of as a means for improving customer service. There is something wrong with the juxtaposition.

It's has to be a comeuppance for Expedia to see its offspring, TripAdvisor, turn into such a formidable frenemy. On the other hand, Expedia shareholders made plenty of money off the TripAdvisor spinoff and are laughing all the way to the bank.

While the Trivago Guy's love-him-or-hate him TV ads garnered a lot of media attention in 2014, it was the Expedia brand that really kicked butt on TV.

Greed may or may not be good, but in travel metasearch complexity is good. New rules in Europe may make searching for a hotel room online all the more difficult.

Booking.com likely faced penalties and findings that it infringed on competition laws if it hadn't come to terms with regulatory authorities in France, Italy and Sweden. This agreement appears to disadvantage Booking.com versus its competitors -- unless authorities compel them to sign similar pacts.

Many vacation rental owners are not going to be happy about HomeAway's online booking push -- but it is in the best interest of travelers and HomeAway's shareholders are going to back the move, as well.

Amazon is meeting with hotels and hotel middlemen to ramp up its hotel supply, but is taking a deliberate approach and is currently conducting A/B testing of its new hotel-shopping experience. But, this is obviously just the opening shot.