Sun, sea and surfing
The market for booking travel online is rapidly consolidating
IN 1996, when Microsoft was still ahead of the big technology trends, it launched a small brand called Expedia Travel Services. It hoped to persuade customers to book holidays online. It was not an immediate success. Few households had an internet connection then and, just as importantly, most people thought the idea of buying a holiday through the ether (not to mention typing their credit-card details into a web browser) plain foolish.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline "Sun, sea and surfing"
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