The major news in the travel world today is Expedia’s buy of Orbitz.com, for a whopping $1.3 billion; this follows their buy a few weeks back of Travelocity, for $280 million. It consolidation of a business that appears to do nothing but consolidate.

Require Expedia. Until now, they possessed (among others, and only on the user side) Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Trivago and Travelocity.   But it is not only Expedia. TripAdvisor used to be possessed by Expedia. Spun off in 2011, they now   own (amongst others) TripAdvisor, FlipKey, Airfarewatchdog, BookingBuddy, Cruise Critic,  Family Vacation Critic, GateGuru, Independent Traveler, SeatGuru, Jetsetter, TravelPod and Virtual Tourist.   Priceline owns Priceline.com and also   Booking.com,  agoda.com, Kayak, rentalcars.com and OpenTable.   And Orbitz, who Expedia bought today, started off as Sabre, which was begun by American Airlines and grew to include the other large airlines in the country, and then generated Travelocity, that is now owned by, yup, Expedia!   It makes me dizzy.

So what does this mean for you?   Those travel websites   you love, or that guarantee something special, are probably owned by a larger corporate monster, and are selling different-hued variations of exactly the same thing. Trivago ads feature a cool-looking guy   who could an Apple spokesman, but it is only a different piece of Hotels.com, which includes more of a John Hodgman-as-PC-guy vibe. They  offer items, and have exactly the exact same deals using the hotels. Which may not change how that you book travel, but we  think is important that you understand as an educated customer.

We work with all both and. All of them have advantages or disadvantages, depending upon the excursion. Which is the reason why we choose and pick the booking method for each trip and itinerary, as delivers the very best value for this customer. As is the booking process for this trip every trip is habit. That is the reason why we charge fees — to ensure each trip can be given the time that it ought to be planned by us.

We are not owned by anyone. So we do not have quotas to meet or agendas to follow, or motives to steer you into 1 direction over another when it comes to your wedding or honeymoon. We enjoy that, and our customers do to. And as companies appear to work this way,  we like it even more.