Travel buddies: Expedia acquires Travelocity for $280 million
Expedia has acquired Travelocity, one of its rival online travel agencies, from the travel technology company Sabre.
The deal, which costs $280 million in cash, effectively cements an agreement reached by the two travel sites in 2013, whereby Expedia would handle most of Travelocity’s North American operations while Travelocity would drive additional Web traffic to Expedia.
As noted by Re/code, the merger continues a consolidation in the online booking industry, which has seen notable acquisitions from Expedia’s chief competitor, Priceline, including its purchase of the popular restaurant reservation service OpenTable last year.
As for what happens to Travelocity now that it’s part of Expedia, well, it’s likely to be business as usual for the “roaming gnome” company. The former is expected to continue operating with no significant front-end changes under the latter’s umbrella, which also covers a number of other online travel agencies including eLong, Hotels.com, Hotwire, and Trivago.
The official iOS app of Expedia and Travelocity are both available on the App Store for free for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
For more recent acquisition news, see also: Ahead of rumored Beats Music relaunch, Apple acquires music analytics startup Semetric, Dropbox acquires startup behind popular document-editing app CloudOn, and Facebook unveils voice transcription feature in Messenger, acquires design firm.
