Expedia.com, the world’s leading online travel agency, today announced the availability of its free hotel booking app, Expedia Hotels, for iPad and Android tablets. Since launching in spring 2011 for the iPhone and Android handsets, Expedia Hotels has become one of the world’s most popular hotel booking apps. The Expedia Hotels mobile app has been downloaded almost two million times and has been the #1 free travel app in more than 40 countries in the iTunes App Store.

To mark the launch of the Expedia Hotels tablet applications, Expedia will host a Twitter chat today starting at 10:00 AM PST to talk about the relationship between travel and technology. Participants who follow the @Expedia Twitter handle and use the hashtag #Expchat will be entered to win an iPad 2 loaded with top travel applications, including Expedia Hotels.

The tablet-optimized launch comes at a time when travelers are choosing more and more to bring their tablet on trips, rather than a laptop. For those on the road or in their living room, Expedia Hotels helps customers quickly find, research and book more than 130,000 hotels, via intuitive prompts, lush graphics and a beautifully tactile booking experience. The entire booking process—from start to finish—requires no more than four taps of the tablet.

In more than half of the booking scenarios on the iPhone, customers book hotels for the same night. With Expedia Hotels, they can instantly find available hotels within walking distance, and can search and narrow via price, distance or review rating.

“One pillar of our Expedia Everywhere strategy is designed to give the world’s travelers a sleek, simple, rich booking experience beyond their desktop computers,” said Scott Durchslag, president, Expedia Worldwide. “There might be no device better suited to that experience than a tablet. Travel is inherently a mobile experience so as more consumers use mobile devices, Expedia.com will become increasing mobile to fit those needs. Today’s travelers want to be able to make booking decisions in an instant—they want the perfect room at the right price, without delay. And Expedia Hotels delivers.”

Expedia Hotels is available for free from the Apple App Store and in the Android Market.

Key features include:

  Real-time availability of more than 130,000 hotels worldwide

  Gorgeous slideshow of hi-res hotel photos

  One-tap ability to compare multiple hotel details and locations

  Secure booking in four taps

  Ability to see all available hotel rooms & suites in vicinity, via GPS, through an interactive map layout

  Filter by price, distance, hotel name, and traveler rating

  Access to the Expedia library of more than 4 million individual traveler reviews

  Amenities, directions and detailed descriptions for every hotel

  User information is automatically saved to simplify future bookings

  Localized for 16 languages worldwide