Expedia buys Sabre’s Travelocity

Expedia has completed the acquisition of Travelocity from Sabre Corporation.

The deal is worth US$280 million in cash and follows a marketing agreement between Expedia and Travelocity in 2013. Since this time, Travelocity has been powered by Expedia’s technology, and has had access to Expedia’s supply of travel content and customer service programme.

“Travelocity is one of the most recognised travel brands in North America, offering thousands of travel destinations to more than 20m travellers per month,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, Expedia’s president & CEO.

“The strategic marketing agreement we’ve had in place has been a marriage of Travelocity’s strong brand with our best-in-class booking platform, supply base and customer service. Evolving this relationship strengthens the Expedia Inc family’s ability to continue to innovate and deliver the very best travel experiences to the widest set of travellers, all over the world.”

Sabre’s president & CEO, Tom Klein, noted that his company’s “primary focus… is to provide mission-critical software solutions to our global airline, hospitality, and travel agency customers”.

“We have had a long and fruitful partnership with Expedia, most recently by partnering to strengthen the Travelocity business, so our decision to divest Travelocity is a logical next step for us both,” he added.

The acquisition of Travelocity comes just two months after Expedia finalised a AU$703 million (US$555m) cash deal for the Wotif Group, which includes such online travel brands as wotif.com, lastminute.com.au, travel.com.au and latestays.com. These, and now Travelocity, will add to Expedia’s existing portfolio of brands including Expedia.com, hotels.com, Hotwire, Egencia, eLong and trivago.

Launched in 1996, Travelocity  was one of the world’s original OTAs, but it has effectively been merged with Expedia since the 2013 marketing agreement.