Rumor: Kayak and Orbitz considering a merger?
Orbitz is owned by the Travelport, a unit of Blackstone Group and is also a publicly traded company. Other companies that Blackstone’s Travelport unit holds include:
• Galileo, Worldspan, Apollo (GDSes); G2SwitchWorks (GNE);
• Orbitz (mainstream OTA); CheapTickets (discount OTA); eBookers (European OTA); Orbitz RoadWarrior (business travel); Away Network (luxury travel);
• Octopus Travel, HotelClub, RatesToGo (hotel bookings);
• Gullivers Travel Associates a.k.a. GTA (hotel wholesaler);
• Hilton hotels, La Quinta Inns & Suites (hotel chains)

Kayak which acquired SideStep in late 2007, is the largest (by far) travel meta-search site in the US. It is financially backed by Sequoia & Accel Partners which also back companies like:
• ITA Software (GNE)
• TravelGuru (Indian travel meta-search)
• TravelPost (hotel reviews) and part of Kayak

Lately, Kayak has been trying to increase its international market share with some mixed results. A number of travel meta-search sites have sprung-up in recent months including Expedia-owned TripAdvisor Flights, Bing’s Travel, Trax as well as a few minor ones. Furthermore, in order to respond to TripAdvisor’s recently started travel meta-search site, Kayak started to heavily emphasize its TravelPost hotel-review site engaging in some media-activities and making public statements aimed directly towards TripAdvisor. At the same time, Orbitz being the mainstream OTA most-heavily reliant on airfare service fees, has been rumored to be up for acquisition after the increased competition between the big 4 (Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline) resulted in all of them cancelling their service fees (Priceline being the first one to do so and Orbitz the last one).

Which brings me to Orbitz and Kayak, already close partners in Kayak metasearch. Orbitz is Kayak’s exclusive online travel agency partner in Kayak metasearch. Speculation has been rife that Orbitz, the weakest sister among the online travel agencies, is in play. When Expedia eliminated flight-booking fees, taking away a huge chunk of Orbitz’s revenue, the prognosticators offered a scenario that perhaps Expedia would buy Orbitz or maybe Travelocity and Orbitz would join forces.

But, the Orbitz-Kayak merger theory posits that Orbitz could build a profitable search business in tandem with Kayak’s metasearch platform if Orbitz downplayed its transaction business and leveraged the huge amount of air and hotel searches that consumers already are conducting on its global websites. For Kayak, a merger of some sort with the larger and search-query-rich Orbitz brand would give Kayak even greater scale, including in markets like the U.K., where Kayak’s effort have been sluggish.
http://dennisschaal.blogspot.com/2009/06/orbitz-and-kayak-perfect-together.html

Major OTAs drop ticket booking fees permanently
Several major online travel agencies are permanently waiving the $7 to $12 fees they charge to book an airline ticket in an effort to lure travelers amid lackluster demand and increasing competition from the airlines themselves. Orbitz, CheapTickets and Travelocity said this week that they have extended spring-time promotions that let customers book flights on their sites for free until May 31. Expedia last week permanently removed the fees it charged. Agencies “want to hang on to customers, and hope that by waiving fees for airline tickets, they’ll come back for something else,” says travel analyst Henry Harteveldt of Forrester Research.

Tom Botts, partner at consulting firm Hudson Crossing, says this week’s announcements don’t mean that all agency fees have disappeared. Many still impose “ankle-biter fees,” he says. For example, Travelocity, Orbitz and its sister site, CheapTickets, still charge a fee for tickets booked on two or more airlines. Such “interline” tickets account for more than 20% of airline ticket sales at Priceline, spokesman Brian Ek says. Other agency charges are “even more confusing,” Botts says. Last week, Expedia announced it was also eliminating change and cancellation fees for hotels, car rentals and cruises. Competitors Orbitz and Travelocity, meanwhile, still charge $25 for some hotel changes or cancellations.
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2009-06-02-orbitz-expedia-travelocity-fees_N.htm

Expedia ordered to pay $184 for charging extra fees
A King County Superior Court judge ruled on May 28 that Expedia “pay $184 million for repeatedly breaching its contractual obligations to consumers by charging service fees under false pretenses in millions of hotel transactions”. According to law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro (HBSS), the judgment is the largest in Washington state history for a consumer class action. Filed in 2005 by Steve Berman, managing partner of HBSS on behalf of Expedia customers, the suit claimed that the travel giant paid taxes based on the wholesale price, but collected taxes from consumers based the higher retail price, pocketing the difference.
http://www.eyefortravel.com/news/north-america/expedia-faces-184m-judgment-lawsuit
http://www.traveldailynews.com/pages/show_page/31296-Seattle-judge-orders-Expedia-to-pay-consumers-$184m

Tripware launches MS Outlook-based booker
Travel management software that allows booking via Microsoft Outlook has been launched into its first ‘beta’ phase. Tripware’s Outbook ‘plugin’ fully integrates itself into Outlook 2007 and uses its calendar to plan and book travel. Software company Remotian Systems, which owns the Tripware business travel service, said the plugin was aimed at business users who manage and book their own travel. The plugin also offers loyalty programme tie-ins, expense report management and preferred travel supplier settings for airlines, hotels and car rental. The software is also available as a standalone product.
http://www.abtn.co.uk/news/0312576-tripware-launches-outlook-based-booker

Microsoft’s new search engine Bing offers also travel-meta search functionality
http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/travel/archive/2009/06/03/start-your-travel-search-on-bing-by-hugh-crean.aspx

Lastminute.com release restaurants-near-you mobile application
http://lastminutelabs.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/new-video-showing-nru-working-in-new-york-with-zagat-restaurants-on-g2/