Booking Holdings

Is Kayak abandoning metasearch? Not likely at all. But why not test photos and merchandising messaging on a site that is a Kayak offshoot instead of a Booking.com clone?

In contrast to its recent penchant for big acquisitions, the Priceline Group now seems to be content to take minority stakes, such as this one with Hotel Urbano, while Priceline focuses on integrating past acquisitions and its new B2B businesses.

Slack is becoming the messaging app of choice for modern work teams, and these nascent travel services are just the start. Expect more established business travel related services and new Slack-native services to crop up in coming months.

Sustainability sounds nice in theory, but the reality is travelers care a lot more about other features hotels offer that really determine whether or not they'll book.

Smart booking and passenger management systems are evolving at a rapid pace, so we should expect big improvements in the passenger experience.

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There could be less than meets the eye in the new Kayak-HomeAway partnership. But even if that were true it wouldn't soften the speculation about a blockbuster deal for HomeAway.

Kayak already displays some vacation rental listings from sister site Booking.com although HomeAway's properties, many from individual owners, would give Kayak users additional choice. The Kayak-HomeAway partnership could be a nice test for Kayak parent the Priceline Group to see if it wants to cozy up in some form with HomeAway.

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Booking.com's focus on hotels plus TV and online advertising, which gets more guests into those hotels, is obviously paying off.