Beautiful Kaley Cuoco in a Priceline.com commercial
Priceline has shown aggressive growth over the years and with heavy advertising and its strong Asian and European marketed affiliate, Booking.com, the booking agency peaked its head over the $1000.00 mark for the very first time. Although closing today at $995, Priceline has come to hold a market capitalization higher than many of the major hotel chains combined, standing tall with an impressive $51 billion. It’s not very common for the middle man to be the top dog, but that’s just the unsurprising power of the internet. The steady growth of Priceline over the years has been incredibly hot, returning more than 1000% in the last few years alone.
With Booking.com playing a huge role, I believe that much of this solid growth comes from the process in which Booking.com uses to take reservations. Their simple procedures seems favorable to both the hotels and guest opposed to Expedia’s system. With Expedia, customers will create reservations on their website and handle nearly all affairs through Expedia, including their non-refundable payment – which must be paid in advance. With this type of process, Expedia takes their cut of the full payment then returns the rest to the hotel at their convenience.
Booking.com customers experience a more direct approach with the hotel. Booking.com is merely a process that enables its customers to find the hotels that they want. Although the reservation takes place on the website, the entire reservation is referred to the hotel. The hotel receives all of the customer’s information, requests, and even payment information. Normally, no full payment is required and most reservations have free cancellation. And excluding deposits if required, the full payment is physically settled at the hotel when they arrive. The hotel then pays a commission to Priceline at their convenience.
This whole process seems like a win for hotels, a win for customers, and with heavy advertising has shown to be a big win for Priceline.
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