Spencer Platt
- Uber considered making a bid for travel website Expedia, The Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
- The potential deal would take Uber closer to "super app" status, according to one analyst.
- CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said he wants to make Uber a one-stop app for transportation and delivery.
Uber's reported interest in travel booking website Expedia points to one way the ride-hailing app could get closer to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's vision of an everything app.
Uber has spent the past few months talking to advisors about bidding for Expedia, which has a market cap of about $20 billion, The Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing three unnamed people. The discussions were preliminary, according to the report, with one of the people telling the FT that Uber has not formally talked to Expedia about a potential deal.
An Expedia spokesperson declined to comment to Business Insider on the report, and Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Acquiring Expedia could bring Uber closer to the one-stop app that Khosrowshahi has talked about, Gordon Haskett analyst Robert Mollins wrote in a research note on Wednesday.
Khosrowshahi has repeatedly said that he wants to add more services to Uber. Users have been able to request rides and order restaurant meals through the app for years, but more recent additions include grocery delivery, which Uber launched in the early months of the pandemic in 2020.
Uber has also been expanding its travel offerings. The company started selling train tickets in the UK in 2022, for instance.
"Anywhere that you want to go in your city and anywhere that you want to get, we want to empower you to do so," Khosrowshahi told the FT earlier this month.
In China, WeChat and Alipay offer an even wider variety of services, from booking a plane ticket to transferring money. Elon Musk has said he wants to provide a similar range of services through X, formerly known as Twitter.
However, in a May interview with Skift, Khosrowshahi resisted describing Uber as a potential "super app," calling the term "loaded." Uber is trying "to be that everyday app that you go to," he said.
Meantime, Uber might not need to buy Expedia in order to offer Expedia bookings, according to Gordon Haskett's Mollins.
"Even if a deal doesn't transpire, we think it would be logical for Uber to have talks with Expedia regarding a potential white-label solution as it would help fulfill Dara's super app vision," Mollins wrote.