Expedia, an online travel that accepts Bitcoin when it comes to hotel reservations, has just picked up Orbitz for a whopping $1.3 billion. Orbitz, too, is another online travel company, and this particular acquisition by Expedia would see it have a fighting chance against Priceline, which so happens to be a far larger competitor of Expedia. Size does matter at some point in time, it seems.
This particular deal between Expedia and Orbitz would mean the latter is another feather in the former’s cap – and this is one cap that is heavy with feathers, since other travel sites belonging to Expedia include Hotels.com, Hotwire and Trivago. Apart from that, Expedia is still fresh from its acquisition of Sabre’s Travelocity for $280 million in January this year.
I suppose the growth and presence of travel as well as home-sharing sites, ranging from the likes of Hipmunk to Kayak and Airbnb, has proven to be quite a catalyst for online travel companies to do their bit when it comes to purchasing smaller rivals, with hopes of not only maintaining, but to grow their customer bases. This particular acquisition by Expedia would see it own Orbitz’s namesake website, in addition to consumer sites CheapTickets, ebookers and HotelClub, among others.
Filed in .. Source: cnet