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At 35, Richard Barton is already a bit of a relic. The chief of online travel agency Expedia still pads around his Seattle-area headquarters in his socks and manages to hit the slopes almost every weekend, partying away like its 1999.

But that's O.K., because unlike so many now extinct dotcoms, Expedia is solidly profitable, netting $20 million last quarter as it doubled gross bookings from a year ago, to $1.47 billiondwarfing the $915 million collected by chief rival Travelocity. And as Expedia begins this month to offer its smorgasbord of services to the $180 billion U.S. business-travel market, Barton remains every travel agents worst nightmare.

Barton was working for Microsoft in 1994 when he started what has become the Webs biggest travel agency. The site is battling, in the marketplace and among regulators, against Orbitz, which is owned by a group of major airlines. And so far Expedia has outhustled the newcomer, mainly by vastly improving its profit margins on hotel bookings.

It also inked a deal with Ticketmaster and bought a custom-vacation wholesaler as well as an off-line business-travel agency. Already the top site in Britain and France, Expedia says it will invade Asia next year.

— By Julie Rawe. With reporting by Nathan Thornburgh/Seattle

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