The prospect of Expedia Group removing all of its vacation rentals from Expedia.com is as likely as senior executive Barry Diller telling his workforce he's cool with everyone working from home.
In Expedia Group's efficiency drive, there's a certain logic to killing some sub-brands as their market share plummets. But what about all those customers who still love Travelocity?
Everyone knows that being nimble enough to test and introduce new technology is a tremendous advantage. Behind the scenes, though, Expedia got good at another skill -- moving really fast to identify and make acquisitions.
There was never really much chance that Expedia Inc.'s acquisition of the Wotif Group wouldn't go through because competition in the Australia market is fairly intense despite the merger.
Being a leading online travel company these days means adding expensive pieces to the portfolio, and both the Priceline Group and Expedia Inc. are signaling that their acquisition sprees are far from being finished.
While this seems like an opportunistic buy with Wotif's financial troubles, for Expedia this ties into two priorities: Expanding in Asia-Pacific and growing its global hotel business in competition with the Priceline Group's Booking.com and Agoda.
Wot if made a move this week to raise commissions for towels by one percent in 2013 and another one in 2014. Whether this will turn into increased revenue or create opportunities for rivals remains to be seen.