Expedia baggs HomeAway for $3.9Bn, wasn’t the only part left of Holiday Homes rental in Expedia Travel Portal?

Expedia acquired HomeAway, holiday homes site and the direct competitor to Airbnb, for $3.9 Bn in both cash and stock. The condition is that Expedia will need to pay a certain amount as breakup fee, in case the deal falls apart. With HomeAway on board, Expedia has acquired the holiday homes module, which was the only thing it had not ventured into as yet.

HomeAway is a Texas based vacation rental site which showcases about a million properties across 190 countries. The market share of this site was $3 Bn and the shares for the company traded at $32.04. Expedia will pay 19% of the share price, after having acquired this site, and entered this segment of travel planning.

Expedia is all set to change the business model of HomeAway the vacation rental platforms to make it more profitable, and is working towards making the combination better. Expedia is planning to offer 1.5 Mn accommodations through HomeAway which the customers can choose to stay at, and which will eventually boost the sales for Expedia, and offer it a profitable solution. Expedia is currently on the go as far as international spaces are concerned. You can see it in the way the company is progressing along international lines, and acquiring newer travel sites and firms. Wotif.com was one of its acquisitions, prior to HomeAway. In fact, Expedia has moved its headquarters from Bellevue to New Seattle.

So, what does this acquisition mean to Expedia? Before we get there, let’s understand the major difference between travel site and travel portal.

Travel Site Vs Travel Portal

There are different affiliate travel sites, and then there’s a travel portal like Expedia which has gained popularity and visibility in its territory. Before exploring this entirely, let’s aim to understand the basic difference between a web portal and a website.

A website in the broadest term is where web pages, images, videos etc. which are addressed to a particular URL are located. It is a publicly accessible hosted domain. It normally offers content for viewing, and supports a user in conducting a particular task.

Portal is slightly different from a website. It is a service which offers a wide range of resources to be used. An excellent example of a portal would be Google. Along with the search feature, this portal offers you mails, news, shopping etc. features. The multiple applications and databases that work within the portal contain the same look and feel. It is consistent throughout the different portions that you access. The greatest challenge for a portal is acquiring information, and searching and sending information to the users of the portal. The portal accesses information from different databases, and helps the user in their task. A portal adds convenience and ease in the life of the user.

A website derives its data from a single database, but the portal is slightly different here. It acquires data from multiple sources, and contains multiple modules.

Now that you know the difference between a portal and website, which can be extended to travel portal and travel site, let’s understand why Expedia is a travel portal, and how it is challenging others in this segment.

Why Expedia will Win Against Airbnb?

Expedia is an equivalent of an online travel agency, a complete travel portal, which helps you book airline tickets, flights, hotels, car rentals, cruises, vacation packages etc. It works using the global distribution system especially for flight and hotel reservations. The whole design is based using multiple modules. The data is tracked from multiple databases, and then is served into the system. There are separate modules for the different functions defined within this portal. Expedia has acquired newer portals to expand its modules, and improve its business.

With the acquisition of Homeaway, Expedia has ventured into the bed and breakfast segment too. This is the segment where Airbnb is running tough. It has already marked its position in this segment. But, with Expedia coming in, Airbnb is facing a tough challenge. For one, Expedia is a popular online travel agency with a good reach. It is spread in different segments already. With this new segment, it will have something more on its plate. This is definitely going to help further its business in many ways. Expedia helps plans trips and tours, and with this added, youcan even look into homestay vacation rentals. Airbnb is a niche BnB site, and will not be able to compete holding on only to this niche.

Of course, the competition and challenge within this segment is on the rise. With time, the winner will emerge. Looking at this scenario, one can say that a social travel portal development is indeed the need of the hour. If you want to go for travel site development, then get started with building a niche idea.  A mobile first will be good; else you will need to go for travel app development to have a mobile presence.