Clock ticking on Priceline.com.hk/sg/tw

Enough of rumours - fact of the day is that Asian mega-company Hutchison Whampoa have sold the last of their Priceline shares. Hutch is the majority shareholder in the Priceline Asia operation (Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan).

The Reuters article says

"Priceline.com said it continued to do business with Hutchison Whampoa through a joint venture, Hutchison-Priceline in Asia"

but almost certainly this means that joint venture is on life support - soon to be put out of its misery. As I discussed earlier Priceline Asia has unfortunately been in trouble from the start, never living up to its promise in Asia. Priceline has not had much luck in Asia. In addition to the troubles of Priceline Asia, it's efforts in Australia went through a lot of money - mainly largest teleco Telstra's - under a different name (www.myprice.com.au - domain name now belongs to a car company) before shutting down moments after launch in a barrage of expensive post/early bubble bust redundancy payments.

Priceline should take this chance to close down its Asia JV and relaunch efforts under Bookings.com brand (I would have liked to have said the Activehotels brand but no more).