Orbitz Worldwide disrupted Travelocity's more than decade-old relationship with AOL Travel and will become the portal's primary travel brand.
In the multiyear agreement, beginning in January 2012, visitors to AOL Travel will be able to book air, car, hotel, cars, vacation packages and cruises through Orbitz Worldwide.
This is not a private label deal; the Orbitz brand will be prominent.
In turn, Orbitz brands will publish destination and other travel content from AOL brands, including AOL Travel, HuffPost Travel, Gadling and their bloggers.
In an interview Nov. 17 at the PhoCusWright conference in Hollywood, Fla., Barney Harford, the Orbitz Worldwide CEO, said he believes his company won the AOL Travel business based on "a superior customer experience."
Harford added that users of AOL Travel will be able to enjoy Orbitz's various price assurance products, where refund checks are mailed if the fare or rate drops prior to departures or hotel stays.
The terms of the Orbitz-AOL deal have not been disclosed.
In 2000, when Travelocity struck its deal with AOL, Travelocity was obligated to pay AOL $200 million over the course of the five-year agreement and the two companies shared transaction and advertising revenue.
This is the second recent big loss for Travelocity.
In the second half of 2012, Orbitz is slated to replace Travelocity as the private label provider for the American Express Consumer Travel site.
Asked recently if Orbitz won the American Express business based on providing more attractive economics, Sam Gilliland, the CEO of Sabre, which owns Travelocity, said he's not privy to the financial terms of the Orbitz-American Express deal.
"It's a competitive marketplace," Gilliland said. "Sometimes you lose."
Carl Sparks, Travelocity CEO, says portal deals aren't important as they once were and these days Travelocity focuses more on affinity and loyalty partnerships. "I didn't even have it [AOL] in next year's plan."
"We were not really surprised," Sparks says of losing the AOL account. "It doesn't trouble me that much."
Losing the American Express account was a "difficult one," Sparks concedes.
However, Sparks says American Express really was asking for a great amount of work to transform its consumer travel site -- and that would have been a distraction for Travelocity's own technology-improvement agenda.
"What would have been right for their business," Sparks says, referring to American Express, "wouldn't have been right for mine."