Booking.com and KAYAK parent The Priceline Group has entered a strategic partnership with TripAdvisor to enter a few of its brands into the latter’s instant booking platform. Integration work has already begun to support Priceline Group hotel properties, which should be available on TripAdvisor’s instant booking platform soon.
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TripAdvisor visitors will see the Booking.com listings and will be able to reserve by clicking the “Book Now” button. It also plans to add Priceline’s Booking.com, prieline.com and Agoda.com brands.
The move means Tripadvisor users will now be able to book more than 700,000 hotels directly, without having to click through to a third-party site.
What: Shares of TripAdvisor (NASDAQ:TRIP) were up 23% as of 12:40 p.m. Wednesday after the travel website announced a new strategic partnership with The Priceline Group (NASDAQ:PCLN). Priceline executives said as recently as August that they were wary of working with the new platform because it could draw customer attention away from its brands. The platform provides a seamless and efficient hotel booking experience for travelers. TripAdvisor will then let consumers know that their hotel booking is being powered by Booking.com, and Booking.com will handle all the customer care related to the transaction. “We now believe this branded channel can help introduce more customers to our brands and the experiences we provide”.
TripAdvisor shares jumped 24 percent to $82.85 and Priceline fell 2 per cent to $1,317.69 in early afternoon trading.
The deal strengthens TripAdvisor’s relationship with the world’s largest online travel-booking company, which had gross bookings worth .3 billion past year, Bloomberg reports.
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Meanwhile, Darren Huston, boss of the Priceline Group.
