Expedia News

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.

This current version of the Expedia-HomeAway vacation rental beta functions more like an advertising relationship would than a tightly integrated booking process. These are very early days for the partnership, and what you see undoubtedly won't be the finished product.

Expedia Inc. takes a somewhat narrow definition in claiming to be the "world's largest travel site" in its latest ad campaign, and might get an argument on that score from its offspring, TripAdvisor.

Was the Expedia-Travelocity deal just a harbinger of things to come? Expedia thinks so and is looking for additional online travel agency partners who would consider outsourcing the hard stuff to Expedia.

Expedia has been the most aggressive big travel band in corralling travel bloggers, and although their proselytizing can at times be clumsy, it has mostly been very effective.

Want to gauge Expedia's priorities? It implemented its hotel partnership with Travelocity in a hurry in December. But when it comes to rolling out HomeAway's vacation rentals, Expedia says it will get around to deciding how to proceed in the second half of 2014.

Expedia's hotel business has momentum, and the acquisition of Trivago and its strategic marketing agreement with Travelocity are fueling the trend.

Kudos to the European Union for ensuring that Google doesn't wield its market power with excessive advantage in promoting its own services. The U.S. FTC's decision to avoid taking similar actions is a regulatory blemish, although the EU agreement could put more pressure on the FTC to take another look at these issues.

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.

Whether Traxo is the company that ends up bringing personalized hotel recommendations to throngs of travelers or another company does it, this is where online and mobile travel is heading. The airlines are trying to do this, as well.