Launching The Oral History of Travel’s Greatest Acquisition Booking.com
Skift Take
This is the oral history of Priceline's two deals, the acquisitions of Active Hotels and Bookings B.V., that created Booking.com, and continue to shape the course of online travel and the competitive landscape today. The twin transactions were among the greatest Internet deals of all time, and their lessons are relevant to startups and dealmakers in any industry.
It was a seemingly inconsequential meeting between a self-described young, aggressive sales guy, Shane Whaley of Octopustravel, and a U.S. business development executive keen on European expansion, Glenn Fogel of Priceline.com, at World Travel Mart in London in 2002 that changed the course of travel history.
That encounter ultimately tipped off Fogel to the potential of Priceline acquiring Active Hotels, which Whaley had joined a year later. Priceline acquired the UK's Active Hotels in September 2004 for $161 million, and i
