Articles tagged “orbitz”

Advertising technology is driving a programmatic sea change in online bookings. To understand these changes, get the report.

Expedia and TripAdvisor have subsidiaries in China, Priceline has gone the partnership route with Ctrip, and now Orbitz Worldwide wants to get in on the action in a more meaningful way through its HotelClub subsidiary. HotelClub will have to do some heavy lifting in China, which is a coupling, discounting and highly competitive market.

The big hotel chains may not yet mention Airbnb in their SEC filings, but you can be certain they are aware of Airbnb's growth and funding, and likely are lobbying for authorities to clamp down on the peer-to-peer sector.

The Expedia.com homepage redesign is trendy and artsy, with lots of open space and a search widget placed on top of an inspirational photo. Simplicity, photo-led search and responsive design are trending now -- until the next big thing comes along.

Alliances are shifting in online travel as Orbitz cozies up to TripAdvisor after several years of bad blood between Kayak and Orbitz. TripAdvisor may have found a partner in Orbitz for help in booking hotels directly within TripAdvisor's mobile apps.

The rise of metasearch as led to consumers comparison shopping in big ways, the shopping cart abandonment numbers are in line with that.

Now that Travelocity has unloaded its North American websites to Expedia and its private label business to Orbitz Worldwide, the largest remaining question is who will buy Travelocity's European holdings, including LastMinute.com.

Orbitz will feel the most pain from the end of its exclusive relationship with Kayak, and will try to make up for it by forging new relationships with other metasearch players around the world.

As Expedia CFO Mark Okerstrom said the other day, "scale begets scale." Orbitz's modest 15% growth in room nights in the fourth quarter partially reflects the lack thereof.

Was the Expedia-Travelocity deal just a harbinger of things to come? Expedia thinks so and is looking for additional online travel agency partners who would consider outsourcing the hard stuff to Expedia.