Choice and Expedia Sign Three-Year Agreement

Nov 16, 09 | 1:58 am

Choice Hotels International and Expedia have signed a new three-year agreement to include Choice Hotels International properties on more than 80 Expedia and Hotels.com-branded sites.

Stephen P. Joyce, president and CEO of Choice Hotels International, stated that the new agreement is "mutually beneficial and enables hotels in the Choice system to effectively manage their businesses". 

Expedia Inc.'s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that the online travel company is "working with Choice in an agreement that respects the guiding principles which we operate under".

Hotels within the Choice system worldwide can participate in the Expedia marketplace and within a week will start to be available on Expedia.com and Hotels.com sites worldwide, and later on Hotwire.com. 

Principles

The two companies had been in news recently for deadlock over critical issues such as preferential rates, rate parity and last room availability - without lowering commissions. 

Late last month, Khosrowshahi spoke about discussions with Choice Hotels during the online travel company's third quarter earnings call. 

"...As far as the discussions that we've had with Choice, we are not doing business with Choice right now on a chain basis. We don't have a vast majority of Choice hotels on our side," he had said. 

He added, "First of all, our primary goal is to have the broadest, deepest set and highest quality set of inventory for the benefit of our customers. And this doesn't signal any kind of change in our overall philosophy as far as how we work with our hotel partners and what we're looking at. It's not really an issue of economics; it's more than issue of our wanting rate parity and inventory parity for our customers."

"When our customers come to Expedia, we want them to know that they're getting the best prices and certainly, we are insistent on that. And to the extent that Choice doesn't want to work under those terms. We won't be doing business with each other. Those are the terms that we work with our others strategic partners, they're comfortable where they were comfortable with it. So, its nothing usual from what I would say is typical practice for us in most of our other OTA competitors so to speak."