Travel Stuff

This might be the craziest news I’ve heard in a long time, but, there’s a rumor going around that Google has interest in acquiring Expedia. Search meets distribution in a full and complete way, huh?

TravelTrade has an interview with Paul Brown, president of Expedia North American and Expedia Partner Services Group about Expedia’s CruiseShipCenter franchises specifically, and Expedia’s offline plans in general.

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch analyzes what led Yahoo to use FareChase instead of Travelocity for its default travel search engine. Looks like the market for price searching is heating up just as the economy begins slowing.

ABC News: Move Over, Porn: Online Travel Sales Up: “”

Om Malik provides a strong take on the Kayak/SideStep merger. Most notable is that Om is drawing comments from Kayak co-founder Paul English. Without taking sides here, it looks like there’s more than one point of view on this business, eh?

Breaking: Kayak Raises $196 Million, Buys Rival SideStep: “”

Whew, this is some heady news as I’m heading out on two week’s holiday. I’ll have to call some friends at SideStep to see what the deal is here. But very wild.

Have Website, Will Travel

Thoughts from the first ever travel industry bloggers summit | Tracking Tourism

Travelocity launches new service for mobile devices

Wow. Expedia announced a new media-based pricing model today - during Priceline’s presentation at PhoCusWright, no less. Is this is a sign that Expedia’s seeing fewer reservations and needs alternative revenue streams? Or are they flexing their traffic-based muscles?