Online car hire site purchased by Expedia

Online travel giant Expedia has reportedly bought the internet-based car rental booking firm, CarRentals.com. Although the specific conditions and terms of the purchase were not immediately revealed, early media reports indicate that CarRentals.com will be able to maintain its independent, unique brand, and booking of car hire through this website will remained essentially unchanged in the near future, despite the change in owner. CarRentsals.com, however, will be hooked up with Hotwire, an Expedia subsidiary which focuses on discount travel solutions.

Expedia is perhaps the best recognized brand in online travel, even though the firm has been faced with rapidly increasing competition from similar retail travel sites, which often try to beat prices offered by the sector’s largest company. Expedia allows clients to book hotel accommodation, flights and entire vacation packages online. In a sense, Expedia functions similarly to most comparator sites, in that it searches the prices listed on dozens of travel portals, in order to collect for the prospective clients some of the best deals available on the internet. One of the criticisms that have been directed at Expedia, however, relates to the booking charges that are tacked on to all hotel accommodation and air ticket prices, but only once the prospective client has selected a seemingly bargain travel package.

Expedia faces increasingly stiff competition from other major online retail travel sites, including Travelocity and Kayak.com. Yet with the recent purchase of CarRentals.com, Expedia appears set to increase its presence in the booming online car hire booking industry.

www.expedia.com