Travel Trouble: Expedia's Woes Pressure Orbitz, Priceline

The online travel booking business is not going to survive an economic downturn unscathed. That’s not a surprising statement, but confirmation of those sentiments yesterday from Expedia (EXPE) has the Street scurrying to revalue the online travel stocks.

As I noted in a post yesterday, Expedia observed on its post-earnings conference call that the softness the company had been seeing in the U.S. and the U.K. earlier in the year has now extended to “nearly all” geographies and all key product areas, including air, hotels and car rentals. The company indicated that transactions dropped off during the week Lehman went bankrupt, and have not rebounded much since.

This morning, several analysts cut ratings on the stock.

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