For years, Travelocity has been a go to site for seeking out the best prices on airfare and hotels. This was part of my arsenal when I did my searches. Now, I can scratch it off the list. Here is why…
As quoted from Skifttake “As expected after the early termination of a Federal Trade Commission antitrust review two weeks ago, Expedia Inc. acquired Travelocity outright for an underwhelming $280 million in cash.” The full story is here. Of course, they will maintain the Travelocity name and website for those not aware.
Well, Expedia is on a shopping spree for sure. Not only did they bargain for Travelocity, when you are on a streak, why stop there? They went after and acquired Orbitz, another former competitor. This narrows the field from the four major players: Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, and Priceline down to two. Are you keeping track or do I need to spell it out for you? EXPEDIA and Priceline.
If you were not aware, Expedia also owns Hotels.com, Hotwire, Trivago, CheapTickets and eBookers, Venere, CarRentals.com, Classic Vacations, Expedia Cruise Ships, plus others with lesser-known names. Priceline’s stable includes Booking.com, Kayak and Agoda.com. Most roads will lead to Expedia.
Other mergers you may or may not care about, depending on your search style, Skifttake also reports “Switzerland-based Bravofly has an agreement to acquire Lastminute.com, often referred to as Travelocity Europe, for $120 million. Subject to regulatory approvals, the LastMinute.com deal is expected to close in the next couple of months.”
This news will certainly help me purge my travel searching bookmarks. Hunting through multiply versions of Expedia will result in a paraphrasing of Albert Einstein’s quote “Stupidity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Until something happens to them, my favorite search engines are Hipmunk, Adioso, Google Flights, and Drungli.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment