*** Welcome to piglix ***

Booking.com

Booking.com
Booking.com logo.svg
Type of site
Booking Service
Available in 42 languages
Area served Global
Owner The Priceline Group
Website booking.com
Alexa rank 85 (February 2017)
Commercial Yes
Registration Optional
Launched 1996; 21 years ago (1996)
Current status Online
Booking.com B.V
Subsidiary
Founded Enschede, Netherlands in 1996; 21 years ago (1996)
Headquarters Amsterdam, Netherlands
Key people
Gillian Tans (CEO)
Parent The Priceline Group
Subsidiaries Booking.com
villas.com
Website booking.com

Booking.com is a travel fare aggregator website and travel metasearch engine for lodging reservations of Dutch origin. Since 2005, it has been owned and operated by United States-based The Priceline Group.

The website lists approximately 1,200,000 properties in 225 countries and books 1,200,000 room nights per day. The site is available in 40 languages.

In 2013, the site accounted for more than two thirds of the revenue of The Priceline Group.

Booking.com was formed when bookings.nl, founded in 1997 by Geert-Jan Bruinsma, merged in 2000 with Bookings Online, founded by Sicco and Alec Behrens, Marijn Muyser and Bas Lemmens, which operated as Bookings.org. The name and URL were changed into Booking.com and Stef Noorden was appointed as its CEO In 1997, Bruinsma wanted to post an ad in De Telegraaf, the Dutch newspaper with the highest circulation. The ad was rejected since De Telegraaf only accepted ads with the phone number, not with a website. In 2002, Expedia refused to buy bookings.nl.

In July 2005, the company was acquired by The Priceline Group for USD133 million, and later it cooperated with ActiveHotels.com, a European online hotel reservation company, purchased by The Priceline Group for USD161 million.

In 2006, Active Hotels Limited officially changed its name to Booking.com Limited. The integration successfully helped Priceline to change its financial position from a loss of US$19 million in 2002 to US$1.1 billion in profit in 2011. This acquisition was praised by some social media as “the best acquisition in Internet history” since no other acquisition in the digital travel market had shown to be as profitable.

Darren Huston, was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Booking.com in September 2011 by the Priceline Group, and also served as President and Chief Executive Officer of The Priceline Group since 1 January 2014 until his resignation on 28 April 2016. 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.


...
Wikipedia

...