Expedia, world's largest travel company, now accepts Bitcoin. Your thoughts?

[coindozer7]

Great to see that now Expedia accepts Bitcoin!
It was great when Overstock.com and Dish Network started accepting but I actually use Expedia quite often so it's even better

[Seldar]

To my mind, it's one of the best news in Bitcoin world, far more important than DISH network.
Unlike DISH, Expedia is a worldwide company.

At least, I'll be able to use frequently my BTC in real life!

[madmat]

Here in France, no one knows overstock, but expedia is well known. Great signal.

[hellscabane]

Probably not too much of an impact with price in all honesty, at least in the immediate-term. But this does help push the prong along nicely in regards to furthering merchant acceptance; now it's a matter of getting the other prong of mainstream users to increase.

I know what I'm doing when I plan my next vacation.

[madmat]

I still have to plan my summer vacations. I am going to have a serious look to expedia.

[ljudotina]

Your thoughts?

They can't be bad. Every single business that starts accepting BTC is good for BTC. More places you can spend your BTC = more reason to have some. More people having some = better for eneryone in BTC ecosystem. Let alone price rise.

[bryant.coleman]

There is still some confusion about the news. According to the initial announcement, they are accepting Bitcoins only for the hotel booking. Are they accepting them for the flight bookings as well?

BTW..... Coinbase has scored some brownie points in their battle against Bitpay. 

[LiteCoinGuy]

I think it is awesome! I hope they have some big banners that declare we now take bitcoin. Nothing like good media from a decent company.


:Edit I just checked the site, no bitcoin payment option as of yet or I missed it

yeah and a little discount for paying in BTC would be nice 

[smashingpumpkin]

Im actually very exited. this is a great step forward.

[salmondance]

Im actually very exited. this is a great step forward.

More and more companies show their loalty to bitcoin and i like this trend!!

[jeffersonairplane]

This is absolutely fantastic. The price will keep going up when different retailers begin to take Bitcoin.

[beetcoin]

Wow, that is great news, and yeah, I think it's probably a bigger deal than Overstock. I'd never actually even heard of them until they started accepting Bitcoin, but Expedia is pretty huge. One of my goals is to be able to travel the world on Bitcoin so this is another step in the right direction.

my goal as well, but thing is.. overstock is huge, even if you haven't heard of it. expedia is big as well though.

[Elwar]

I believe they are limiting it to hotels first and expanding depending on how that goes.

Which is fine, http://www.cheapair.com is good for booking flights in bitcoin.

Paying for hotels is very much needed, it would have saved me about $200 in exchange fees for my hotel stay on my last trip.

[adsactly]

I don't think this will effect the price in the long run however it is great to see the Corporations
are picking up bitcoin. My question is are they just dumping it on the Market or are they holding
it and watching the value grow.

[johnyj]

I want to see that some special offers and high end luxury hotel only accept bitcoin payment exclusively

[acs267]

I use Expedia, so I guess it's a huge plus for me. Fast, efficient, and money saving. Might help bump up the Bitcoin price, but will definitely bump up the knowledge of Bitcoin.

[BittBurger]

I am on their site right now trying to check out and there is no option for Bitcoin.

When I called their 800 number and got routed to the Philippines, I had a fairly hilarious discussion with the phone rep who had no idea what i was talking about.

Super.

--------

Update:   I was talking to Hotel Sales.   She had no clue.  I asked to speak to a supervisor.  She comes back and tells me to go to Coinbase.com.  

Sigh.  

She said they have received no information or training on how to handle Bitcoin, and that it must be done on the website only.

I told her I was on the website and it wasn't there.

She said "We dont handle the currency conversion here".  She said that a few times.  I have no idea what she's talking about.

Then she offered to transfer me to customer service.   "You're not customer service?" I said (I called the customer service number).  "Nope!" she said.

I can already tell this is going to be an adventure.   On hold now.

--------

Ok so after getting transferred to 7 phone reps (none of which could pronounce Bitcoin), it is apparently showing for some hotels and not for others.

The one I was reserving - it did not show.  So we both escalated a ticket to the support group.

However if the phone experience is any indication, the support team isn't going to have a clue either.

[eid]

This is great news. There seems to be a lot of this recently. Bitcoin and travel are made for eachother.

[Ashbite]

anothe victory for the bitcoin!
Im just waiting for this posts to show up, its always fun to see what company has accepted btc.
Soon enough everything is buyable with bitcoin, i believe!
Thanks for the heads up post.

[LeMiner]

Just booked a hotel, works flawlessly and much faster than using a creditcard. They use coinbase as backend.