Hotels.com cuts IT staff, shifts work

Computerworld - Hotels.com LP laid off employees last week in its Dallas offices as part of a restructuring and may have cut most of its IT staff in that city -- yet another sign of a declining job market for IT professionals.

The company isn't disclosing how many positions were cut or what areas they worked in. But one former employee who was laid off last week and spoke on the condition of anonymity said that about 50 IT workers lost their jobs Thursday morning. Hotels.com is part of Expedia Inc.

In response, a Hotels.com spokeswoman said in an e-mail that the company "made organizational changes last week to align its global structure and make the company more effective in pursuing its growth strategies."

Some Dallas-based positions "have relocated to other Hotels.com and Expedia Inc. offices. Other positions, unfortunately, have been eliminated," Hotels.com said in its statement. "We are assisting those employees we were not able to place internally by providing multiple resources to them in their search for new employment."

According to the former employee, among the people cut were the application and database developers, quality assurance workers and release management staff. A small IT staff was retained, and the technology is being moved to another group in the U.K., the employee said.

The Hotels.com Web site was down briefly this afternoon. A message during the outage said the site was "currently performing scheduled maintenance and is temporarily unavailable."

Since last fall, tens of thousands of jobs at IT vendors have been cut as the worldwide has recession worsened.