Expedia News

So much for taking a summer vacation. This year, the hotel industry was busy making major moves and investments, as well as launching new brands, properties, and policies.

There are five tons of heavy lifting to be done to reenergize and transform Uber — and it all has to be done in one of the brightest business spotlights that there is. Uber has made its selection — let's see how Khosrowshahi begins to handle it.

This pick came out of left field, but totally makes sense considering the path that Khosrowshahi has led Expedia along over the past decade and more.

Any potential crisis has now been definitively averted, at least until this contract expires.

TripAdvisor is still a must-have marketing channel for online travel agency and hotel advertisers. But if the Priceline Group and Expedia tilt their spend more toward other marketing vehicles, there aren't a lot of other players with the marketing resources they have to make TripAdvisor whole.

The Hyatt-Expedia crisis seems to be averted, for now.

The candid comments of the Accor CFO show just how difficult it is for hotel companies to compete with the big online travel agencies. You can't do it half-heartedly and AccorHotels will have to decide how much effort it is willing to put in to the initiative.

We are not expecting Armageddon as the Expedia-Hyatt talks come down to the wire. Hyatt wants a fair deal, and Expedia stands to gain if it can retain the broadest depth of hotel content possible. The devil will be in the details but we expect champagne glasses to be raised this week.

Expedia doesn't really care about the noise coming from some disgruntled vacation rental owners. The company is focused on scaling HomeAway's vacation rental business, and having online bookable properties is the formula for the future.

Expedia's minority investment in Traveloka, a household name among travel players in Indonesia, makes sense. The company has struggled to gain share in Southeast Asia and a partnership can fill the gap.