Articles tagged “priceline”

An outsider might think the U.S. online travel market is already saturated, but Booking.com is proving that there is plenty of room to grow in the U.S., and competitors are feeling the heat.

Expedia Inc. takes a somewhat narrow definition in claiming to be the "world's largest travel site" in its latest ad campaign, and might get an argument on that score from its offspring, TripAdvisor.

It was a great year on the stock markets in 2013 for online travel agencies as a whole. Their businesses are increasingly global, and many are benefiting from expansion into developing markets and boosting their hotel products.

In a turning point for Booking.com and the hospitality industry, the largest lodging site in the world now has so many vacation rental listings, dispersed across 193 destinations, that it is changing the nature of the online travel business.

Jeffery Boyd doesn't want to meddle in Priceline's business on a day to day basis, which may provide angst to some investors. Still, incoming CEO Darren Huston has capably led Priceline's prized asset, Booking.com, over the last two years, so he's got the pedigree in what promises to be a fascinating new era in online travel.

From the front lines of online and mobile travel, Orbitz Worldwide still thinks it can be a winner as an insurgent, although there hasn't been any major evidence of a surge.

Priceline's Jeffery Boyd is going out -- from the CEO post, at least -- at the top, and the guy with a banker's demeanor will come to be viewed as a rock star of online and mobile travel. We don't know about groupies, but there certainly are a ton of imitators.

The changing of the guard is now official -- in more ways than one.

One of Expedia's answers to Booking.com is the Expedia Traveler Preference Program, giving consumers the choice to prepay for a hotel (merchant model) or pay at the hotel (an agency model like Booking.com's). Booking.com's sole use of the agency model gives it a speed advantage as the merchant model is more complicated when signing on and retaining hotels.