Booking hotels
Booking.com is an online booking website established in 1996, based in Amsterdam, Netherlands and since 2005 owned and operated by United States based Priceline.
Booking.com offers online accommodation booking. It claims to have over 540,000 properties globally under contract[2] and that it deals with more than 700,000 room nights reservations per day.[3] In 2013, it accounted for more than two thirds of Price line's revenue.[4] Booking.com is available in more than 41 languages.[5]
In 2012, the United Kingdom's Office of Fair Trading found that Booking.com may have been limiting price competition on hotel room sales.[6] Booking.com does not charge a booking fee to customers, but charges commission on bookings to accommodation partners.
History
Booking.com was founded by Geert-Jan Bruinsma, who is computer
scientist, in Amsterdam in 1996. Geert-Jan spotted a gap in the online
travel market, which was to create an online platform in order to
provide online hotels and accommodations reservation for businesses and
travelers around the world.[7]
In July 2005, the company was acquired by The Priceline Group
for $133 million, and later it was cooperated with ActiveHotels.com, a
European online hotel reservation company, which purchased by The
Priceline Group for $161million.[8]
In 2006, Active Hotels Limited has officially changed its name to Booking.com Limited.[9]
It is worth noticing that the integration successfully helps Priceline
to change its financial position, that was from a loss of $19 million in
2002 to $1.1 billion in profit in 2011. This acquisition was praised by
some social media to be “the best acquisition in Internet history”
since there was no other acquisition in the digital travel market has
shown to be profitable.[10]
Darren R. Huston, was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of booking.com in September 2011 by the Priceline Group,[11] and has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of The Priceline Group since January 1, 2014.[12] Huston was the former executive of Microsoft Corporation,
the largest software company in the world in 2003. Later he served as
President and Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft Japan from 2005 and
Microsoft Corporation’s Corporate Vice President, Consumer & Online
from 2008.[11]
Corporate affairs
Senior management
- Darren Huston, Chief Executive Officer, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Priceline Group[11][12]
- Mr. Daniel J. Finnegan, Chief Financial Officer since January 2009. He is also Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Accounting Officer of The Priceline Group.[13]
- Jeffery H. Boyd, former President and Chief Executive Officer of The Priceline Group, now remain as Chairman of The Priceline Group’s Board of Directors, The Priceline Group Inc.[12]
- Kees Koolen, Chairman of Booking.com, founder of booking.com B.V. and former Chief Executive Officer of Booking.com.[11]
Marketing
Selected partnerships and agreements
In August 2012, CTRIP.com International Ltd
(Ctrip), a Chinese online travel company, and Booking.com formed a
partnership with an commercial agreement. This allows Ctrip to access
Booking.com's global portfolio.[14]
Panorama Group, Indonesia’s largest tour and travel company, has
spent $2 millions on launching bookpanorama.com. Strategic partnership
have been formed with Booking.com, so that it will be able to access
booking.com’s portfolio of more than 270,000 hotels across 179 countries
in the world.[15]
In 2014, Sprylogics International Corporation, which provides local
mobile solutions for consumers as well as mobile applications, has
signed an agreement with Booking.com. So that Sprylogics’ Poynt App and
Poynt-Enabled SDK would be able to use the extensive hotel data of
booking.com.[16]
In October 2014, Ural Airlines, one of the top Russian airlines, announced that it is now formed a partnership with booking.com.[17]
Advertising
Booking.com was the top spender in the travel & tourism category
for Google Adwords in 2011, which its estimated annual spending on
Google Adwords was $40.4 million.[18]
In 2013, Booking.com’s first brand campaign, ‘Booking.yeah’, was
lunched online, aired on television stations and in movie theaters and
on TV networks, for the U.S. market with advertising agency Wieden +
Kennedy Amsterdam.[19] In September, Australia became the second market to view the campaign.[20] Later in 2014, Canadian,[21] the U.K.[22] and German [23] branding campaign were also being launched by Booking.com.
Operation
Applications development
In November 2010, Booking.com launched its own hotel and accommodation booking app in iPad version.[24]
In February 2011, Booking.com launched its Android version’ hotel and accommodation booking app.[24]
In April 2012, Booking.com announced the launch of the first global
last-minute hotel app, ‘Booking.com Tonight’. It is an app designed for
iPhone and iPod touch.[25]
In October 2012, Booking.com launched its first app in Windows
version, which allows customers to complete their hotel and
accommodation bookings directly from the new Windows 8 platform.[26] After launching the initial iPhone app, Book.com updated the version of the iPhone app with a new function, Passbook.[27]
In December 2012, Booking.com launched its native Kindle Fire app,
which is available for download in all Amazon’s Appstores including the
U.S., U.K., Germany, Spain, France, Italy and Japan.[28]
A continuous growth in Booking.com’s mobile bookings has been shown
since 2011. booking.com announced over PR Newswire in 2014 that its
mobile bookings grow 160% in 2013, which the total transaction value of
mobile accommodation bookings grew over to $8 billion. In 2011, the
mobile bookings’ figure was $1 billion and tripled to over $3 billion in
2012.[29]
Partial list of competitors
- Expedia - Expedia is threatened by booking.com in Europe. From Morgan Stanley analyst Scott Devitt’s survey in 2013, it found 47% of European OTA bookings are driven by Booking.com while Expedia drives 21% of the bookings.[30]
- Wotif - Booking.com had overtaken local rival wotif.com Holdings in the number of nights booked and therefore booking.com is now the biggest online travel agency by room nights booked in Australia.[31]
- Orbitz
- TripAdvisor
Brand
- Villas.com - Realizing that hotel room booking is different from do-it-yourself vacation planning, Booking.com developed villas.com as product extension. It is more focused on vacation rental market, which covers villas, apartments and rental homes.[32]
Controversy and criticism
In March 2014, Booking.com sent a request to Ukrainian and Crimean
Hotels to clarify if they have connections to Viktor Yanukovych and 17
other Ukrainians, who the European Union sanctions were imposed on.Since
Booking.com is a Dutch company, which headquarters are based on
Amsterdam, she is required to obey the trade restrictions of the EU, so
that business is not allowed to be done with those sanctioned
individuals.[33] Booking.com’s behavior aroused deprecation from its Russian competitors.[34]
In the beginning of November 2014, it was known that by accessing
Booking.com reservations, crooks have been able to obtain contact
details to send customers demands for prepayment. Booking.com said it
was countering the fraudsters and refunding customers from the UK, US,
France, Italy, the UAE and Portugal, all of which had been affected.
Since the fraud, Booking.com has made changes so data can only be
accessed from a computer linked to the hotel's server. Its teams have
also worked to "take down" dozens of phishing sites, as well as working
with some banks to freeze the money mule bank accounts.[35]
