Expedia News

Groupon is rounding out its hotel offering after having acquired same-night hotel app Blink last September. The whole thing is still a very niche product.

Malte Siewert of Trivago has a mantra that's a characteristic of many successful companies: Test things out, yes, but make quick decisions and get things done. He's happy about the Expedia acquisition, but Trivago is apparently creating its own destiny.

Expedia has long argued that Google wields inordinate power, and now it is feeling Google's wrath. There will be a financial impact, and perhaps a bit of a brand hit, but this injury is far from fatal.

These are explosive allegations that Expedia is involved in a paid links scheme with travel bloggers and that frenemy Google retaliated. Stay tuned for more fireworks.

Expedia's Flight Recommendations feature is a valuable tool for flyers planning their itineraries. Finally, a Big Data feature that transcends the usual hype.

It was a great year on the stock markets in 2013 for online travel agencies as a whole. Their businesses are increasingly global, and many are benefiting from expansion into developing markets and boosting their hotel products.

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.

Expedia tries to sum its survey with a sunny figure that says 84 percent of passengers believe fellow flyers are considerate, but the excitement around increased in-flight device use suggests most people prefer to fly with as little human contact as necessary.

Travel companies slow to set up mobile functionality may be comforted by this news, but mobile usage will only continue to rise due to changing consumer habits and the growth of travel in emerging economies where mobile devices are more common than desktops.