Changing its tune, UK regulator declines to investigate Expedia’s acquisition of Trivago

March 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Last week, we reported that Britain’s Office Of Fair Trading (OFT) is casting its eye over US travel giant Expedia’s recent bid to buy control of Düsseldorf-based hotel search company Trivago.

Among other things, there had been some questions about Expedia using Trivago to display its own results more prominently, despite assurances of otherwise during the analyst call about the merger.

Well, the story’s changed. OFT says today the acquisition “does not qualify for investigation.”

So there.

expedia trivago

Still ongoing is OFT’s inquiry into Expedia having entered into contracts that may have stifled competition. Rare parity provisions apparently stipulated that the hoteliers couldn’t enter into arrangements with other named distributors.

A final decision on that is slated for December. A related class action suit has been launched in the US against Expedia and other OTAs.

Related posts:

  1. UK regulator to investigate Expedia and Priceline meta acquisitions
  2. UK regulator steps in to investigate online hotel bookings
  3. Trivago gets funding and looks to US online travel market with TV advertising
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Sean O'Neill About Sean O'Neill

Sean O’Neill is a UK-based reporter for Tnooz.

Since university, he's been a full-time journalist for US consumer magazines and websites, and since 2007 he has covered B2C travel news full-time.

He lives in London and is travel tech columnist for BBC Travel. He used to work in New York City as the online senior editor for Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel.

In the past, O'Neill held editor, writer, and reporter positions at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and Foreign Policy magazines in Washington, DC. Please visit his personal site and follow him on Twitter or Google+ .

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