Articles tagged “mergers and acquisitions”

The stars were seemingly aligned when Booking.com made its move. The big U.S. players were too comfortable with their huge margins from the merchant model; Booking.com focused on independent hotels; and search engine marketing was on the rise. Still, it was the entrepreneurs and dealmakers who made it all happen.

The deal surprised analysts, some of whom didn't see an obvious logic for it. Yet one thing is sure: Online hotel sales are a bit like an old-fashioned butter market. A big chunk of butter changes hands multiple times and everyone gets their hands greasy.

Booking.com is Booking Holdings' favored child, but with the addition of HotelsCombined, it is apparent that the parent company still sees plenty of opportunity for its Kayak unit in metasearch worldwide. This deal will help Kayak expand in Asia Pacific, and will give HotelsCombined additional resources as well.

"Anybody telling me you should be limiting the number of brands, I think it's bullshit," said AccorHotels CEO Sebastien Bazin at Skift Forum Europe. We wouldn't be surprised to see him expand the hotel giant's portfolio of brands to at least 40, up from today's 32.

This AccorHotels investment in SBE aligns with its strategy for growth in North America as it adds more properties in key cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Miami. It does, though, contradict, in some respects, the chain's push to go asset-light.

By the time we publish this, we wouldn't be surprised if AccorHotels has already purchased or invested in another business.

Is there anything out there AccorHotels won't buy at this point?

Tune in for a candid conversation about the strategy behind AccorHotels' many acquisitions, why the company wants to be part of consumers' everyday lives, and what the CEO has learned from spending hundreds of millions of dollars on startups.

Many travel agents will have the benefit of selling a wider variety of packages from one distribution channel because of this deal, but will this industry giant really want to give travel agents, and their clients, the best rates if agents don't have anywhere else to turn? Time will tell.

It’s too early to know if short-distance, urban carpooling from BlaBlaCar can effectively compete with taxis and car-hailing apps like Cabify, Lyft, and Uber. But as a defensive experiment, the move makes sense.