- Priceline (PCLN) and Expedia (NASDAQ:EXPE) have made their hotel inventory available for in-app bookings through Priceline-owned Kayak and travel startup Top10's app. However, they refuse to do the same for the Instant Bookings feature within TripAdvisor's (NASDAQ:TRIP) mobile apps.
- Priceline and Expedia's stance highlights the tension between the companies and TripAdvisor. While TripAdvisor drives plenty of traffic to both companies' sites (in exchange for referral fees) through its metasearch platform, it also does so for many rival sites, and (like Google) acts as an alternative to directly using Priceline and Expeida's platforms.
- TripAdvisor's click-based ad revenue (metasearch-driven) rose 31% Y/Y in Q3 to $247M. It's expected to grow at a mid-20s to high-20s clip for the whole of 2014.