TripAdvisor’s spinoff from parent Expedia was “overwhelming approved” by the latter’s stockholders at the OTA’s annual meeting, the company said in a statement. TripAdvisor’s move as a publicly held business will occur around 20 December, reported MSNBC.com.
As part of the move, Expedia will consolidate its shares with a reverse 1-for-2 stock split. After the TripAdvisor deal, all of its outstanding stock will be held by Expedia shareholders. TripAdvisor will be listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol TRIP and headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts.
In the third quarter, sales at TripAdvisor climbed 30% to US$180.8 million, double the growth rate of Expedia, which recorded revenue of US$1.14 billion. TripAdvisor includes 19 travel and advertising brands.
Hilton Worldwide still tops the list of high-profile hotel companies that are rumored to go public, but according to analysts, it will take a significant turnaround in the stock market before any hotel company makes that jump, reports HotelNewsNow.com’s Jason Q. Freed.
“At this point (going public) doesn’t really make sense,” said Will Marks, an analyst with JMP Securities, a full-service investment bank headquartered in San Francisco. “Stock-price performances are largely due to market factors rather than a company’s own strategies and fundamentals. It’s just not been a good time to be a public stock.”
Two hotel companies priced initial public offerings this year: Summit Hotel Properties, a Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based self-managed hotel investment company, went public in February; and Bethesda, Maryland, self-advised real-estate investment trust RLJ Lodging Trust went public in May. However, the IPO landscape has been quiet in the second half of the year.
Read “IPO landscape bleak for foreseeable future.”
Travelers planning visits to Ireland should pad their pockets during 2012. The coalition government announced its fifth austerity budget since 2009, including a 2% hike in the value-added tax to a whopping 23%.
Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan expects the plan to bring in €1 billion (US$1.3 billion) in additional revenue. The government is trying to repair a decade of disastrous policy, he told BBC.
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Latest data from Internet search giant Google has revealed declining cost-per-click rates through the third quarter while click-through rates continue to rise, according to Travolution.
Overall in the travel sector, CPC was down 1% while CTR was up 25% on the back of a 25% increase in clicks and 20% increase in queries.
The tens of thousands of public-sector workers who went on strike in the U.K. last Wednesday had a minimal impact on hotel performance and operations.
“We have not heard that trading in London's hotel sector was affected by last week's strike,” said Russell Kett, managing director of hotel consultancy HVS London. “Our feeling is that, had the capital's transport system been affected, then the impact on hotels would have been more noticeable, but it seems to have been business as usual.”
Hotel performance in Greater London for the week in general was down, according to STR Global. On Wednesday, the day of the strike, occupancy was down 7.7% to 86.4%, average daily rate fell 4.3% to £147.36 (US$231.28), and revenue per available room was down 11.8% to £127.33 (US$199.84).
Compiled by Patrick Mayock.
