Chinese internet giant Tencent and U.S. travel bookings company Expedia have invested in Chinese travel site eLong, totaling $126 million. Tencent has acquired approximately 16% of the outstanding shares for a total purchase price of $84.4 million and becomes the second largest shareholder of eLong.
Expedia has acquired approximately 8% of the outstanding shares for $41.2 million, holds 56% of the outstanding shares (Expedia held a a previous investment in eLong), making the company the largest shareholder in eLong. → Read More
Travel search and booking giant Expedia, which is traded on the Nasdaq under ‘EXPE,’ is spinning off trip reviews site TripAdvisor as a public company. In a release, Expedia said that its Board of Directors has preliminarily approved the plan to separate Expedia into two publicly traded companies.
Expedia/IAC must feel that spinning off TripAdvisor as a public company could be a financially lucrative move. TripAdvisor, which was founded in 2000, was originally bought by IAC in for $212 million in 2004. IAC spun off Expedia, which included TripAdvisor, in 2005. The newly formed TripAdvisor would include all of the domestic and international operations, including its flasghipsite and 18 other travel media and advertising brands. → Read More
Earlier in January, we heard that American Airlines’ fares and links were removed completely from travel bookings site Expedia, after the two companies failed to come to a distribution agreement. Today, American Airlines and Expedia have made peace, announcing a new ” memorandum of understanding” that will allow the companies to resume doing business together effective immediately.
Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed, but clearly, the airline and travel site were able to come to a mutual agreement that suited their interests financially. American had a similar issue with travel search site Orbitz, and also removed its listings in late December 2010. → Read More
TripAdvisor, the Expedia-owned travel site, this morning announced it has boosted its mobile travel offering with the acquisition of EveryTrail. The latter, actually a service from GlobalMotion Media, is a GPS-enabled publishing platform that lets people create outdoor walking tours, hiking trails and city guides for mobile devices. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. → Read More
Expedia has just announced that it has acquired developer Mobiata, the creator of popular mobile travel application FlightTrack. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Mobiata creates a number of travel mobile applications including FlightTrack, TripDeck, HotelPal FlightBoard and FareCompare. FlightTrack is the developer’s most popular app and lets you check flight status, access information about delays or reschedules, locate your flight’s gates, and see real-time tracking maps of flights. FlightTrack is currently a best selling iPhone travel app in the App Store. A Pro Version of FlightTrack is also integrated into TripIt Pro. We’re not sure if that relationship will continue post-acquisition. → Read More
As you know, today is Valentine’s Day. As such, I thought it was the perfect time to write a love sonnet for my new favorite company: Expedia.com. Actually, I’ll do the opposite.
Seeing as it’s a long weekend in the United States (President’s Day is on Monday), I decided I was going to set up a little trip to get away with the girl I’m seeing. A few weeks ago, I set up all the plans for what I thought would be a nice, relaxing weekend. It’s actually been anything but relaxing. My mistake? Using Expedia to book it. → Read More
Google and Microsoft are famous for asking brainteasers during employment interviews to see how candidates think on their feet. But they are not the only companies who ask oddball questions. Glassdoor, the anonymous employee review site, collects these questions from interviewees and just posted a list of the 25 oddest questions from last year.
Most of them tend to be math problems (“How many lightbulbs are in this building?”), but there are a few which are more creative and go deeper to reveal not only a candidate’s character, but the company’s character as well. When an interviewer for oil services behemoth Schlumberger asks an interviewee for his best MacGyver moment, he is projecting a sense of adventure onto the prospective job that is being applied for. The question almost says more about the prospective job than any answer says about the candidate: “We’re looking for a MacGyver. Are you a MacGyver?”
Here are a few of the standout questions from Glassdoor’s list and the companies which asked them: → Read More
Online travel services group Expedia has reported its results for Q2 2009, and the financials aren’t looking spectacular, but they are not as bad as expected.
Although the number of booking transactions handled by the company actually saw a small uptick, gross bookings decreased 5%. As a result, revenues went down 3% (from $795 million in 2008 to $770 million) and operating income decreased a staggering 33%.
On the upside, Expedia’s flight and hotel bookings rose 10% in the second quarter compared to the first quarter following some expense-cutting measures and airline fare cuts. The company’s second-quarter profit was $41 million, or 14 cents per share. → Read More
DealBase.com, an online database devoted to aggregating hotel deals and packages, has secured $1 million in Series A funding from angel investors including Russ Siegelman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Bob Zipp, managing director of Amicus Capital; and Josh Hannah, general partner at Matrix Partners and former CEO of eHow.com.
Launched in November 2008, DealBase crawls the web to create a database of hotel deals, special offers and packages, which currently number more than 22,000 deals, from over 3,500 sources, adding up to $4,660,093 in total savings on the site. The online travel industry is a competitive market chock full of sites that find consumer deals for travel, which makes the popularity contest incredibly tough. Expedia, Kayak, Travelzoo and others all offer packages and deals through their platforms and have a dedicated user base. → Read More
Michael wrote about rumors of a Google/ Skype hookup April 1, a deal that would make a lot of sense. One that doesn’t are rumors that Google may be getting ready to bid for travel giant Expedia. Expedia shares were up over 9% Tuesday and a further 1% Wednesday based on the rumors (chart above) for a market cap of $7.18 billion. Expedia stock is still down approx. 30% from its October 2007 peak. Rick Aristotle Munarriz at Motley Fool makes a lot of sense: I don’t put a lot of weight behind the pursuit of Expedia. I may have suggested last month that Expedia would look good on the arm of another search engine star, but that is mostly because of the attraction of Expedia’s Web 2.0 properties like TripAdvisor.com….As the paid-search leader, Google relies on travel portals like Priceline, Travelocity, and Orbitz Worldwide, to bid for placement on its travel-related search results. Things could get hairy if Google snaps up Expedia. Sleeping with the enemy is one thing. Paying for its fare and making a rival stronger in the process, is another… Now that Google has the DoubleClick acquisition out of the way, welcome back to Google takeover silly season. Expect to see lots of left field speculation in the coming months as the market tries to work out where Google will next park some of its bulging cash reserves. CrunchBase Information Expedia Orbitz Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
JPMorgan’s Internet analyst Imran Khan and his team released a massive 312-page report this morning titled Nothing But Net that paints a bullish picture for the major Internet stocks (Google, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Expedia, Salesforce.com, Ominiture, ValueClick, Monster.com, Orbitz, Priceline, CNET, etc.). Some key takeaways: —Noting that, in 2007, Internet stocks delivered a 14 percent return versus 5 percent for the S&P 500, JPMorgan expects 34 percent earnings growth in 2008 for the Internet stocks it covers versus 8 percent earnings growth for the S&P 500. —In general, as broadband penetration continues to rise, so do e-commerce revenues: —But advertising revenues actually outpace the adoption of broadband: —Free cash flow at large Internet companies will keep going up, fueling M&A and share buybacks. JPMorgan estimates that free cash flow among just five of the top Internet companies (Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and Expedia) will rise from $8.8 billion last year to $12.5 billion in 2008. That is a lot of money for Web 2.0 acquisitions. Top acquirers Yahoo and Google, for instance, each spend about a third of their free cash flow on acquisitions. —Search advertising will continue to dominate, rising from $22 billion globally last year to $50 billion in 2010. Here is JPMorgan’s forecast for the U.S. search advertising market (it expects global search revenues to rise 38 percent in 2008 to $30.5 billion): —And here is its forecast for the U.S. graphical advertising market. Average CPMs for online ads, which bottomed in 2007 at $3.31, will start to rise again (see table below): —As global GDP continues to grow faster than U.S. GDP (3.9 percent versus 2.2 percent in 2007), Internet companies with global reach will benefit. Amazon, eBay, and Google all get about half their revenues from international markets. Yahoo gets only a quarter of its revenues from abroad. → Read More
