Online Travel Agencies 3Q12: International Slowdown

Summary

The U.S. public online travel agencies (OTAs) are maintaining momentum, despite a challenging operating environment overseas and continuing economic uncertainty at home. In aggregate, the three public OTAs eked out reasonably impressive double-digit global growth. Expedia is making strong gains both domestically and overseas, while Priceline's run of astronomical growth – driven largely by international operations – may be running out of steam. But the world's second largest OTA in terms of gross bookings still managed to steal the headlines with its surprising announcement in November that it would acquire Kayak, the leading metasearch player in the U.S.