Expedia News

Expedia apparently bailed out Trover, a photography app that created an attractive user experience but ran into a stone wall in the form of Instagram and Facebook, as well as user interest.

Lots of consumers start their trip-planning with flights. Expedia will use its customer reviews of flights to spur more flight bookings but the company is also focusing on up-selling and facilitating smooth navigation to hotel and vacation-package options.

Big travel management companies are going to look to acquire technology companies and smaller competitors as they struggle to scale up their technology platforms.

While one U.S. administration is getting ready to pack up things in the White House and Trump or Clinton hope to redecorate the place on their own, it could be an opportune time to sneak a Priceline-TripAdvisor or Google-TripAdvisor marriage past those sometimes-pesky antitrust regulators.

Asia-Pacific is expected to replace North America as the world's biggest online travel market next year. If your travel business operates online, it's time to take a good, hard, look at your Asia-Pacific strategy.

After years of relative neglect as big online players focused on hotels, companies such as TripAdvisor, Expedia and Google are investing in and giving new attention to flight products. Kicking and screaming, airlines may end up having to pay more attention to their customers.

Buying TripAdvisor would be a very large -- albeit relatively cheap -- acquisition given its current stock price. One very significant impediment, especially for Priceline, is the fact that Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings, which has historic ties to Barry Diller's Expedia, controls TripAdvisor. Still, for the right price, Liberty would have to consider a sale of its prized asset as TripAdvisor goes through a very challenging and prolonged transition.

Though bots still aren't completely frictionless and can't think like a human (yet), they certainly offer a way for consumers to have a conversation with a brand during the booking process that wasn't possible before. And it is potentially a very cheap channel for the brands.

Barry Diller, the senior executive at both IAC and Expedia, doesn't need any more plaques on his mansions' walls but he is one of the people who had oversized influence in making online travel what it is today. He had a great eye for how e-commerce would emerge and he pulled the trigger on his great acquisitions.

As when it acquired Travelocity in early 2015, the Expedia Inc. acquisition model for Orbitz and CheapTickets is to slash employee rolls, find other cost synergies, move the newly acquired companies to the Expedia technology platform and continue to market the slimmed-down brands. As Orbitz begins its 16th year, it wouldn't be surprising to see the brand get more aggressive in its advertising.