Expedia spends £187m to add Travelocity to its family of online travel websites
Travelocity has joined Expedia’s team of online travel brands, after being bought from technology company Sabre Corp for $280m (£186.8m).
Expedia add Travelocity to a collection of travel sites that include hotel search engine Trivago, Hotels.com and Hotwire, all of which started life as independent companies before being snapped up.
The company’s latest purchase has been on the cards for some time. Expedia and Travelocity signed a 2013 agreement which saw the latter providing technology for many of the former’s operations. Travelocity platforms sent traffic back to Expedia in return.
Last year Expedia splashed out $615m (£380m) on Australian online travel firm Wotif Group, in another example of consolidation in the online booking space. The Priceline Group, an Expedia competitor, spent $2.6bn (£1.73bn) on restaurant reservation website OpenTable last year.
Expedia chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi welcomed the new edition to the “family”. He said:
Evolving this relationship strengthens the Expedia family’s ability to continue to innovate and deliver the very best travel experiences to the widest set of travelers, all over the world.
Shares in Expedia shot up over two per cent on the Nasdaq following the news on Friday, closing at a price of $87.44 per share.