Booking Holdings, (formerly known as The Priceline Group), is an American company that owns and operates several travel fare aggregators and travel fare metasearch engines including namesake and flagship Booking.com, Priceline.com, Agoda.com, Kayak.com, Cheapflights, Rentalcars.com, Momondo, and OpenTable. It operates websites in about 40 languages and 200 countries. In 2016, 88% of its bookings were made outside the United States - most of which used Booking.com.
In 2016, consumers booked 556.6 million room nights of accommodation, 66.6 million rental car days, and 7.3 million airplane tickets using websites owned by Booking Holdings.
In 2016, 93.4% of revenues were derived from commissions and 6.6% of revenues were derived from advertising.
Video Booking Holdings
History
In 1997, Jay S. Walker founded the company, which launched Priceline.com, an online travel site, that used a Name Your Own Price bidding model.
In 1999, the company became a public company via an initial public offering, making Walker, who owned a 35% stake in the company, a multi-billionaire.
The company experimented with selling other products and services such as groceries, gasoline, home mortgages, and cars, but these offerings were discontinued in 2000.
On April 1, 2014, the name of the company was changed from priceline.com Incorporated to The Priceline Group Inc.
In February 2017, Priceline announced a definitive agreement to acquire the Momondo Group. On July 17, 2017, EU antitrust regulators approved the acquisition. The Momondo Group, which operates Momondo and Cheapflights, will roll under Booking Holdings's travel meta brand, KAYAK. In August 2017, KAYAK acquired the assets, including the domain and user information and the mobile apps, of the Brazilian metasearch company Mundi.
On February 21, 2018, the name of the company was changed from The Priceline Group Inc. to Booking Holdings. On February 27, 2018, the company changed its ticker symbol to "BKNG" from "PCLN".
Management
Jeff Boyd was named Chief Executive Officer in 2002 and remained in that role until becoming Chairman of the Board for Booking Holdings in 2013.
Effective January 1, 2014, Darren Huston was named Chief Executive Officer of the company, replacing Jeff Boyd. On April 28, 2016, Huston was forced to resign following an extramarital affair and Boyd was named interim CEO.
Effective January 1, 2017, Glenn D. Fogel was named Chief Executive Officer and President.
Acquisitions
Rentalcars.com
Rentalcars.com, formerly known as TravelJigsaw, is an online broker for car rental that is part of Booking Holdings of companies. Clients search, book and pay for hire cars on Rentalcars.com, and the bookings are fulfilled by car rental companies. Rentalcars.com owns no cars. The company headquarters is in Manchester, UK and the CEO is Ian Brown. In 2016, Supriya Uchil, joined Rentalcars.com as Chief Product Officer from Amazon (company).
TravelJigsaw was set up in 2005 as a broker for car rentals from hire car companies around the world. It was established by four former Airtours International Airways/MyTravel Group executives, and was bought by Booking Holdings in 2010 and its name was then changed. In 2016, Rideways was launched as a new division of Rentalcars.com, with a focus upon personal pick-up at airports, hotels and railway stations.
In 2016, following complaints, the UK Government Competitions and Markets Authority took action on all UK car hire websites, to make sure consumers were provided with better information on the true cost of car hire from January 2017.
In December 2017, the Rentalcars.com Mobile app was awarded World's Leading Car Rental App at the World Travel Awards for the third year running, and in December 2017, Rentalcars.com was voted into the top 20 of the Glassdoor top 20 places to work 2018 in 16th place.
Maps Booking Holdings
See also
- Expedia, Inc.
- Travix International B.V.
References
External links
Source of the article : Wikipedia