Cendant Buys Lodging.com

NEW YORK — Cendant Corp., the biggest franchiser of hotels, bought online hotel reservation company Lodging.com to expand its travel reservations business. Terms of the all-cash transaction weren’t disclosed.

Lodging.com handles about 115,000 hotel reservations a month, said Elliot Bloom, a spokesman for Cendant, whose hotels include Howard Johnson and Days Inn. Closely held Lodging.com offers unpublished, discounted rates at about 3,000 hotels and has partnerships with more than 2,500 travel-related Internet sites.

New York-based Cendant, which is betting on an increase in travel as the U.S. population ages, last year bought the Galileo International travel reservation business for $2.34 billion. The company later bought Cheap Tickets Inc. and started its Trip.com Web site.

In addition to franchising hotels, Cendant owns the Avis rental car business and franchises Century 21, ERA and Coldwell Banker residential brokers.

Last year when Cendant was buying Galileo, the company’s hotel industry competitors raised concerns with regulators that the purchase would give Cendant access to confidential data of other hotels, providing its own businesses an advantage in setting prices. Regulators approved the purchase.

Cendant’s inventory of timeshare properties will be added to Lodging.com’s site, the company said. Also, travel agencies and their customers who use Galileo will gain access to Lodging.com’s inventory. Shares of Cendant were unchanged at $13.59 on the New York Stock Exchange.