Trip.com Revived and Will Lodging.com Be Next?

Orbitz has resuscitated Trip.com for facilitated search in a bid to build its fledgling advertising/media business.

I'm betting that Lodging.com, which was part of Cendant Travel Distribution Services and now is part of the Orbitz Worldwide portfolio, will be next.

Trip.com was relaunched in the context of Orbitz trying to leverage under-utilized or unused assets.

Today, if you surf to Lodging.com, you are redirected to Orbitz.com.

In a Cendant 10-K report, published in 2004, Cendant said of Lodging.com: "Lodging.com provides consumers access to specially negotiated rates at more than 10,600 economy, mid-level and luxury hotels in markets around the world. Lodging.com customers also have access to Galileo's entire published hotel rate inventory, and can book vacation packages through Neat Group's packaging engine on the Lodging.com site. With a network of nearly 4,300 distribution affiliates, Lodging.com also offers hoteliers access and control over their pricing and yield management."

As with Trip.com, I believe that Orbitz soon will tip its hand about a relaunched Lodging.com, which arguably is a very valuable domain name.

Perhaps it will be a hotel booking site or maybe a hotel metasearch or facilitated search offering?

I don't know the details, but as Orbitz does everything it can to build its hotel business, allowing Lodging.com to languish wouldn't be prudent.

A multi-brand strategy pays dividends for SEO, becomes another driveway for consumers entering the Orbitz mansion, and also enables a company to bid on more Google keywords than it would be allowed to do if it were limited to one brand.

In principle, a reinvigorated Lodging.com makes a lot of sense.