Dennis Schaal

As is the case with the Priceline Group's handling of Kayak, it is clear that Priceline isn't doubling down on investing in OpenTable. With Booking.com the parent company's overwhelming priority, the international growth of OpenTable will take place at a measured pace, opening opportunities for others.

Has Starwood done enough in the six months since it began looking at strategic alternatives to maintain the status quo? Not likely at all.

HomeAway's acquisition of Dwellable looks like a classic employee grab to help with development of HomeAway's own apps. And having funding participation from a HomeAway board member at the time never hurts in getting the big company's attention.

Booking.com wants to answer the needs of "one customer," the one who books an apartment one day and a five-star hotel the next. Yes, a revolution in lodging is under way and Booking.com is now shouting about it.

Travel startups pivoting from a consumer business toward a B2B focus is trendy, with founders and CEOs believing that there will be fewer marketing woes and reduced competition. But get in line when it comes to joining the droves of startups trying to sell to big corporations, hotels and travel agencies. The sales hurdle can be almost as intractable as the marketing roadblock.

Outgoing CEO Chris Loughlin is the fall guy in this CEO shuffle. Although a public and "controlled" company, nothing happens at Travelzoo without the approval of founder and current chief talent officer Ralph Bartel.

The Avis Budget CFO said its core business and Zipcar haven't felt a major impact from ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft. When the punch eventually comes it could be Zipcar that takes the body blow.

Oh, it's downright trendy. Trivago's new tilt toward building direct ties to hotels takes place as TripAdvisor is signing up chain after chain for its book-on TripAdvisor Instant Booking product, Google has debuted a similar initiative, Booking.com has created its BookingSuite hotel division, and Expedia has debuted a mobile app for hotels to manage rates and access analytics.

Online travel agencies used to be primarily concerned with handling bookings but now Expedia, Trivago, Booking.com and TripAdvisor are all making moves to give hoteliers executable intelligence about the market and other business-to-business services.

After lots of experimentation, Google realized it didn't need a hotel metasearch site like Google Hotel Finder because it has the Google search engine. That is a formidable asset, to say the least, and it will be a challenge over the years to the powers that be in hotel booking.