Skift Take
Perhaps the immediate challenges that TripAdvisor and HomeAway face will be temporary bumps in the road. For Hotwire, it's a toss-up on whether it can get its mojo back, and American Express Global Business Travel and Travelocity have already seen their best days.
It is gut-check time for five big travel 1.0 brands, most of which made their bones during the growing-up phase of online travel.
Each of them -- TripAdvisor, Hotwire, HomeAway, Travelocity, and American Express Travel -- faces a key transition, a signature moment, that may determine their long-term fates.
We have outlined the key challenges each one of them face, almost midway point into 2010s decade:
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor completed the rollout of its hotel metasearch offering on mobile and its global websites several months ago, and the results so far haven't lived up to expectations.
TripAdvisor, which previously relied on pop-under ads largely for online travel agency websites, is making a big bet that although hotel metasearch will deliver less traffic to advertisers, it will provide them higher conversions and hence higher cost-per-click rates for TripAdvisor.
The company is still working out the kinks from hotel metasearch and says that it expects the biggest h
