Articles tagged “priceline”

Conversion only comes when there's transparency and Hennessey said serving as much personalization is a mission Priceline.com endeavors to take on with product designs every day.

Booking.com's participation in Book on TripAdvisor is a major win for TripAdvisor, which launched its Instant Booking product a couple of years ago and was slow to get hotels, and especially big online travel agencies to join. The U.S. Justice Department was correct, during the Expedia-Orbitz merger review, to see TripAdvisor Instant Booking as an emerging player to heighten competition.

As is the case with the Priceline Group's handling of Kayak, it is clear that Priceline isn't doubling down on investing in OpenTable. With Booking.com the parent company's overwhelming priority, the international growth of OpenTable will take place at a measured pace, opening opportunities for others.

Booking.com wants to answer the needs of "one customer," the one who books an apartment one day and a five-star hotel the next. Yes, a revolution in lodging is under way and Booking.com is now shouting about it.

Independent hoteliers are indeed exploring alternatives to the big online travel agencies, including finding ways to spur more direct bookings, but sometimes it seems like a steep, uphill battle.

Developments at OpenTable have been almost as quiet as a library while the restaurant reservations platform has been in investment mode. The acquisition of a dining reservations platform in Australia is obviously a geographic play.

As competitors close in and some do heavy TV advertising, HotelTonight states that it is doing "hundreds of millions of dollars" annually in gross bookings and that it has grown 100 percent per year over the last two years. This will continue to be an interesting skirmish between a well-funded startup focusing on last-minute versus larger players that can offer more wide-ranging solutions for hotels.

In contrast to its recent penchant for big acquisitions, the Priceline Group now seems to be content to take minority stakes, such as this one with Hotel Urbano, while Priceline focuses on integrating past acquisitions and its new B2B businesses.

Airbnb, with its roughly $24.5 billion valuation, would likely be too big for most of the online travel agencies to acquire but if they are forced to enter the sharing economy in a bigger way several years from now they always have the resources to buy their way in.

There could be less than meets the eye in the new Kayak-HomeAway partnership. But even if that were true it wouldn't soften the speculation about a blockbuster deal for HomeAway.