Articles tagged “mergers and acquisitions”

AccorHotels is buying up and/or investing in a lot of other companies in its pursuit to become an entirely new breed of hotel company.

InterContinental Hotels Group hasn't been as acquisitive as some of its peers in recent years and it's clear that Chief Executive Richard Solomons doesn't intend to follow the crowd.

Marriott's decision to buy Starwood does seem to make consolidation among the rest of the chasing pack seem very likely. The problem is nobody wants to get burned by doing a deal at the very top of the market.

Let's hope that GuestToGuest's bet on home-swapping ends better than General Catalyst's $15 million investment in Couchsurfing did. Plus, two startups — Hostmaker and Travis — raised money.

Greg Maffei made no mention of TripAdvisor playing the long game with its Instant Booking transition. Instead, he almost informally invited bids to acquire TripAdvisor. While the odds seem to be stacked up against Tripadvisor it could still turn things around -- if it gets the time to do so.

Airbnb, Booking.com, and other giants in vacation rental bookings aren't providing the branding and technology needed by professional property managers in resort destinations. RedAwning's model points to one of several ways to fill the gap.

The Priceline Group will consider various strategies to further its priority of increasing its lodging supply. The reason? The more choice, the better the conversion rates of lookers into bookers. When people tell you Airbnb won't ever get into selling hotel rooms, then consider the lessons Priceline has learned about adding rooms.

Hotelbeds has an outstanding market position on the strength of its booking technology. The plan to acquire Tourico shows that its financial backers, particularly buyout firm Cinven, see a path to growth. Expect further acquisitions that add new supplier relationships in new market segments.

Piece by piece, private equity firm Warburg Pincus is building Mercator into a rival to Sabre and Amadeus -- two travel technology providers that provide overlapping software and operational services to commercial airlines (and that recently went public after restructurings by buyout experts). Expect the Mercator merger with Accelya to spur an acquisition spree.

Purchasing a brand like Miraval to enter into the wellness space is a smart move on Hyatt's part, as wellness becomes an increasingly global desire among all consumers, especially among the high-end travelers Hyatt has in its sights.