New York-based Hudson Crossing has released its 2009 Trends in Travel Investment, predicting that "significant travel industry restructuring [is] both necessary and inevitable in 2009".
It says: "The space for Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) has become crowded and a widely anticipated downturn in consumer spending on travel will force one major OTA into a change of ownership."
A change of ownership is one thing, significant restructuring is something else. There would need to be a buy-out between the major OTAs for the latter to occur.
The Thomson/First Choice and Thomas Cook/MyTravel mergers made commercial sense on a number of levels, few of which had anything specifically to do with online. And whether even this double-deal has significantly restructured the UK/European market is debatable.
The tour op tie-up took place before the current slowdown: a merger/buyout of the big OTAs seems unlikely in the current funding climate, even if such a deal could work financially, which is also debatable.
Last December Hudson Crossing predicted that "the Big Four of online travel (Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Priceline) will be challenged by a new very well-funded major player in 2008." The big four did face a few challenges during the year; a cash rich new entrant wasn't one of them.
Microsoft did pay $75 million for Farecast in 2008, which is about as close as we got to "a new very well funded major player" in the online travel sector, although we've given up waiting for Microsoft do something, significant or otherwise, with it.
No-one's mentioned Troogle for a while.
Changes of ownership are always a possibility, but it would need to be something quite spectacular, if not a bit left-field, to significantly restructure the online travel space.
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