The Joy of Travel
In 1996, online travel agency Expedia began life as a division of Microsoft, where Rich Barton, a product manager and frustrated business traveler, wanted to allow individuals to research and book their own travel online. The unit was spun off as Expedia, Inc. in 1999, and nearly 20 years and a series of major acquisitions later, it has just undergone a corporate rebrand to Expedia Group, Inc.
The facelift, which was completed in March, is designed to better reflect the brand’s identity as a technology company within the travel industry, says Michael Graham, Senior Counsel at Expedia Group, Inc. (USA). Expedia Group, Inc. offers a range of services, including those covering hotels and car rentals—alongside the Expedia.com websites Hotels.com (USA), trivago (Germany), and CarRentals.com (USA), to name just some of its numerous brands.
The rebrand followed a busy three years of mergers and acquisitions, with companies including Travelocity (U.S. online travel agency), Orbitz (U.S. online travel agency), and HomeAway (U.S. vacation rental marketplace) all coming on board. These changes have led to a doubling of the number of trademark registrations and domain names that the IP team handles to more than 1,600 trademark registrations and applications and more than 20,000 domain names worldwide, says Mr. Graham.
