Booking Holdings

An outsider might think the U.S. online travel market is already saturated, but Booking.com is proving that there is plenty of room to grow in the U.S., and competitors are feeling the heat.

The UK's Office of Fair Trading has made the hotel industry a bit more competitive, but the new rules have their limits. Booking.com and Expedia aren't permitted to advertise discounted rooms to the general public, but will only do so for members of their loyalty programs and other closed groups. Still, it puts hotels at a disadvantage.

Same-day booking is a trend that's here to stay, especially given its popularity during a season when most travelers try to book ahead for the holidays.

Both unmanaged and managed business travelers are turning to their own mobile apps for bookings presenting an opportunity for previously non-travel apps to increase their own value by adding travel-related tools.

The rules being discussed would apply to Europeans booking rooms in the UK, and the framework would be fairly narrow in scope. They do not address broader rate parity issues, but would indeed provide for more competition and would be good for limited numbers of travelers.

HomeAway, which is way behind, but pushing hard to improve its e-commerce capabilities, is beginning to feel some heat from Booking.com on one side and Airbnb on the other. You could therefore look at this follow-on public offering as a defensive move. On the other hand, HomeAway's acquisition spree is an aggressive tack, and the public offering signals that HomeAway has no intention of slowing down.

In a turning point for Booking.com and the hospitality industry, the largest lodging site in the world now has so many vacation rental listings, dispersed across 193 destinations, that it is changing the nature of the online travel business.

Jeffery Boyd doesn't want to meddle in Priceline's business on a day to day basis, which may provide angst to some investors. Still, incoming CEO Darren Huston has capably led Priceline's prized asset, Booking.com, over the last two years, so he's got the pedigree in what promises to be a fascinating new era in online travel.