Expedia News

Online travel and airline CEOs love it when their companies' advertisements go viral, and they can only pour ice water over their heads, dry off, and admire how the ALS Association has crowd-funded its cause.

What a difference a couple of years makes. No longer sister companies, Expedia doesn't want to participate in TripAdvisor Instant Booking, and declines to do anything to help the brand that it is competing with, along with Booking.com, on TV in their competing commercials.

While it is exciting to see the consolidation happening in the online travel booking space, the lack of new scaled startups to challenge the biggies remains a worry for anyone. And possibly consumers as well.

While this seems like an opportunistic buy with Wotif's financial troubles, for Expedia this ties into two priorities: Expanding in Asia-Pacific and growing its global hotel business in competition with the Priceline Group's Booking.com and Agoda.

The merger and acquisition frenzy in the travel industry continues apace, and Expedia's acquisition of the Auto Escape Group will enhance Expedia's global competition with the Priceline Group.

2014 is turning out to be a consolidation year, with big getting bigger. But there is lots of interesting jostling beyond leaders, and that's where the action will be rest of the year. Airbnb's rise has been spectacular, and will continue to break through on the charts.

The Priceline Group's intent to acquire OpenTable means that merger and acquisition activity in the travel industry in 2014 may even outdo 2013's frenetic pace. Get ready for the next shoe to drop.

Travelocity was once the darling in Sabre's portfolio, and now the fastest-rising star is its hospitality solutions business. It has plenty of room to grow, particularly in EMEA and APAC, where chains do not dominate and there is so much need for advanced technology solutions.

The top 10 U.S. travel advertisers in paid search in 2012 also filled out the top 10 in 2013, although their positions changed somewhat. This shows how difficult it is for travel startups and other companies that were not early adopters to break through and get their messages out to consumers.

Travel industry digital ad spending is heavily skewed toward driving transactions because online travel agencies, which are primarily interested in converting lookers into bookers, are calling the shots.