Expedia.com Online Travel Agencies

Expedia Buys HomeAway for $3.9 Billion

Expedia continues to buy up online travel sites with its latest travel website acquisition priced at $3.9 billion for HomeAway, a vacation rental site. Expedia bought legacy online travel agencies Travelocity and Orbitz earlier this year. Expedia also owns Hotels.com, HotWire.com and Trivago.com.

Perhaps most amazing is Expedia has a market valuation of $18 billion, while the new kid on the block Airbnb has a market valuation of $20 billion.

HomeAway plans to start charging travelers an average fee around 6% for rental bookings. Up to now, the home owner hosts paid fees for listings.

The Expedia-HomeAway deal is expected to close in Q1 2016.

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Read more at New York Times article November 5, 2015.

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3 Comments

  • Tyson November 5, 2015

    Wow that last bit really sucks. I use Homeaway more than AirBnB right now because it has more listings but once this goes into effect, I’m going to look at AirBnB first.

  • Eric November 5, 2015

    @Tyson, you know Airbnb charges travelers a fee of 12%?

  • Tyson November 5, 2015

    @Eric

    I honestly didn’t. I’ve never actually gone through with a booking on AirBnB and probably didn’t pay attention to the details when looking at the price. I’ve really only focused on selection and overall price.

    I wonder if that’s why I’ve ended up using Homeaway more often when renting. I always try to book the best property I can for a certain budget and have always ended up booking a Homeaway house.

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