Booking.com Finally Joins Major Hotel Chains in Book on TripAdvisor
Photo Credit: TripAdvisor will get a major new participant, Booking.com, in TripAdvisor's feature that enables users to book hotels right on TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor
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Booking.com's participation in Book on TripAdvisor is a major win for TripAdvisor, which launched its Instant Booking product a couple of years ago and was slow to get hotels, and especially big online travel agencies to join. The U.S. Justice Department was correct, during the Expedia-Orbitz merger review, to see TripAdvisor Instant Booking as an emerging player to heighten competition.
As TripAdvisor ramps up hotel bookings on its own sites and apps, the Priceline Group and Expedia have been playing very hard to get but Priceline's Booking.com has now started participating in TripAdvisor Instant Booking, and is the first major online travel agency to do so.
Booking.com's participation -- and sister brands Priceline.com and Agoda will likewise join in -- has big implications. TripAdvisor views this first strategic partnership with a global online travel agency for its Book on TripAdvisor solution as "a major milestone."
At mid-day Tuesday, TripAdvisor's stock price had jumped 23 percent, Expedia's had fallen nearly 4 percent and Priceline Group's stock price fell 1.86 percent.
There had been a lot of speculation that Booking.com and Expedia -- which together accounted for 46 percent of TripAdvisor's total revenue in 2014 -- would reduce their marketing spend with TripAdvisor while the site that previously was known primarily for its user-generated hotel revie
