Hotels.com and Expedia Merge

4,500 additional properties will be available--B&Bs too

[skunker]

Has anyone heard about this? Hotels.com and Expedia will merge and will offer new affiliate tools and features starting April 6. This will bring an added 4,500 properties between them.

This is great news for those of us who have trouble promoting hotels that are not offered by one affiliate, but are offered by another.

Also, IAN.com has stated they will start offering a whole new database of Bed & Breakfasts!

Comments?

[cornwall]

Hotels.com and Expedia are both owned by [iac.com ] and have been for a while.

[Blue_Fin]

Where did you read that Hotels.com and Expedia will merge? First I've heard of that.

IAC owns a lot of different travel properties (and non-travel properties) but I haven't heard that any of them will merge with each other.

[skunker]

If you are an IAN affiliate, log into your Affiliate CP and you will see the announcement there.

I know that they were owned by IAC for a while, but I believe that they kept their properties seperate in order to maximize $$.

[Blue_Fin]

I'm not an IAN affiliate because Hotels.com's rates are inflated too often, so I can't read the announcement myself. Does it say that their affiliate programs will be merged or that the two websites will be merged?

[skunker]

I hope it's okay that I can post this, but here it goes:

"In order to provide the best pricing per room and the most inventory to our Affiliate Partners we are merging our Hotels.com inventory database with that of Expedia. This merger creates numerous advantages, but it also impacts the user interface on IAN.com and it may require updating your custom search forms. We have outlined the key elements of this project. Click here to review the key elements of the project"

That is from my login screen. Personally, this is great news. Now I can do the XML feed that I've always wanted to do.

[Blue_Fin]

Thank you for the clarification because your initial post wasn't correct. You indicated that two websites will be merging when, in reality, their inventory databases are what are being merged.

This is a good thing for them because it has looked very foolish when the two websites list wildly different rates (and a different amount of service fees) for the same search query.

I recently did a rate comparison for a one night stay for a particular hotel using Hotels.com, Expedia, Travelocity, Travelweb, Orbitz, Quikbook, Hotwire and the hotel's own website. Comparing the total cost (including all taxes and fees), Expedia was the lowest by $2 and Hotwire was the highest. While Hotwire does not name the hotel until after purchase, it was easy to discern its identity through their vacation package service.

[GerBot]

I think it is nice to see that even the big boys play the SEO game.

Have a look at the bottom of expedia.co.uk
nice inbound link to [uk.hotels.com...] which is hotels optimized sub directory.