Expedia News

Google is eating the world. When metasearch sites such as Trivago see a strategic benefit in increasing their advertising in Google metasearch, it's not only enough to make your head spin, but it's ominous from a competitive standpoint, as well.

For years, airlines had little leverage with their partners. But airlines now are strong, and they have the advantage. Why shouldn’t they use it in contractual discussions?

Expedia will stop being a controlled company after it acquires Liberty, and Barry Diller, chairman of Expedia, will own about 29 percent of the online travel group's voting power. The move makes the company's ownership structure more transparent, which is a good thing.

As the saying goes, keep your friends close and your rivals closer. Or in this case, that rival might turn out to be a friend, after all, once you've become the world's biggest hotel company.

For pundits looking for a headline that Marriott won reduced commissions from Expedia, the reality is likely far more complex than that, and it might take an audit over the next few years to truly sort out the revenue impact. The new deal has Marriott properties remaining for sale on Expedia brands, as the two companies march off into the sunset maintaining their rough-and-tumble, if symbiotic relationship.

United has leverage in its contract dispute with Expedia as each side maneuvers for position in the run-up to their contract expiration on September 30.

Tony Fernandes is taking AirAsia on "the final part of the company's evolution," one that will see the airline become a tech player. But it’s one thing to disrupt legacy carriers, and another to disrupt the disruptors in the online travel space. He disagrees, of course.

Executives from Expedia and other travel companies acknowledged at an Amadeus tech conference that cloud computing can lead to hidden waste. Mistakes include not monitoring costs and allowing internal strife to delay cross-department projects.

Context is everything, and it’s hard to have that when the company reporting a bunch of facts and figures makes it hard to have comparisons to past data. We can’t wait to see that S-1 filing, eventually.

Unlike some of its hotel peers, Marriott isn't giving up on its hopes of being the world's favorite travel company.