How Expedia wiped a Georgia municipality off the map before the city prevailed
Photo Caption: Columbus, Ga., hotels are available on Orbitz.com (above), but they don't exist for Expedia.
Skift Take
The Expedia settlement means its hotel-tax practices are not one-size fits all. It has to pay the full taxes in places like Columbus, Georgia, and New York, but can avoid them in locales where it has beaten back lawsuits.
This is a big story about a relatively small city, and how the major online travel agencies wiped it off the map, only to have the city prevail in the end.
The issue was hotel taxes, and the news is that Expedia has settled a 6-year-old dispute with Columbus, Georgia, agreeing to pay $586,000 in back occupancy taxes, plus attorneys' fees and expenses, for hotel bookings on Expedia.com and Hotels.com, the Ledger-Enquirer reports.
Expedia, the story says, also agrees going forward to pay occupancy tax on the full retail rate it charges consumers, and to re-list the cities' hotels.
An Expedia spokesperson had
