Expedia News

Behind the scenes, the reorganization within Expedia Group must be ugly. Otherwise the CEO wouldn't have cited it near the beginning of his prepared remarks during the earnings call. The last time Expedia cited a distraction like this was in 2016 when it stumbled after acquiring Orbitz Worldwide the previous year.

The so-called relevancy assessment, which had Trivago punishing big advertisers for landing pages that didn't perform well, and other factors, proved to be a multiyear disaster for the metasearch company. The company has ditched the policy — and now its CEO.

When guests stay in short-term rentals, they shouldn't have to worry that hosts might be sharing their intimate photos and personal information on Facebook, whether it be in nominally private groups or not. Airbnb, Vrbo, Facebook, and others need to be more vigilant so that their hosts aren't violating privacy policies on their platforms or elsewhere.

Expedia, Booking.com, and Ctrip are boosting the supply of sightseeing and experiences options that can be booked in merely a few clicks. But several factors are complicating any plans they may have to dominate bookings in this sector the way they have in flights and hotels.

In online travel, everything is tactical and not necessarily permanent. But for now, at least, those coveted Airbnb listings are appearing in Google's vacation rental pages in some European cities. This could have big implications for both companies if those listings remain.

The vacation rental sector is still pretty fragmented with plenty of single destination specialists still around. Awaze, with its private equity backing, wants to change this.

Airports and airline carriers should be equipped for an influx of competition in the air travel sector, much of it due to an increasing number of low-cost airlines and secondary airports. To be well-positioned, they should look for partners that have access to qualified audiences at scale.

Behind the scenes, there may be abundant reasons that Booking Holdings and Airbnb, for that matter, won't be dabbling in Google's vacation rentals business for the time being. Perhaps they are seeking to boost direct traffic or are unhappy with the economics and user experience. Expedia may be positioned to take some advantage.

Google is following its hotel playbook in giving its own vacation rental and apartments business preferential treatment in Google search. As antitrust regulators take a look at Google's practices, and if travel is part of the review, this twist will be high on the agenda.

Package holidays are changing and under pressure, but in markets such as the UK, Germany, China, and Canada, these offline options still have their place. Failure to adapt was a contributing factor in Thomas Cook's demise, but there were a whole bunch of other things going on as well.