Travel

In 1996, Geert-Jan Bruinsma, a student at Universiteit Twente, founded Bookings.nl. In 2000, Booking.com was formed when Bookings.nl merged 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 to Booking.com, and Stef Noorden was appointed as its CEO. In July 2005, the company was acquired by Priceline Group now called Booking Holdings for 133 million, and was merged with ActiveHotels.com, a European online hotel reservation company, purchased by Priceline Group for $161 million in September 2004.

In 2006, Active Hotels Limited changed its name to Booking.com Limited. The integrations of Booking.com and Active Hotels helped its parent company improve its financial position from a loss of 19 million in 2002 to 1.1 billion in profit in 2011. The acquisition of Booking.com was praised by some social media as the best acquisition in Internet history since no other acquisition in the digital travel market had been shown to be as profitable. Between 2010 and 2012, the company launched mobile apps for the iPad, Android, iPhone, iPod Touch, Windows 8, and Kindle Fire. Since January 2013, many advertisements have dubbed "booking.com" as booking.yeah.

In 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States decided within the Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B. V. case that the term Booking.com, via the suffix .com, had created an identity that could be differentiated from the generic verb and hence could be trademarked. In the summer of 2023, Booking.com announced the start of testing an artificial intelligence-based travel planner. AI Trip Planner is based on ChatGPT technology. It is intended to help choose a direction, plan a route, or answer specific questions. Initially, the service will be available to a limited number of users in the United States. In November 2023, Booking.com launched the ability to make cruise reservations in the United States, in partnership with World Travel Holdings.

Management history

Darren Huston was appointed chief executive officer of Booking.com in September 2011 and also served as president and chief executive officer of Booking Holdings from 1 January 2014, until his resignation on 28 April 2016 after his extramarital affair with another employee was revealed. Gillian Tans was then appointed CEO. Tans resigned in 2019, after which Glenn Fogel became CEO.

Controversies and criticism

Anti-competitive allegations

In September 2012, the United Kingdom's competition authority, the Office of Fair Trading OFT, issued a statement of objections against Booking.com, Expedia, and IHG Hotels & Resorts alleging that Booking.com and Expedia had entered into separate arrangements with IHG which restricted the online travel agent's ability to discount the price of room-only hotel accommodation. Booking.com, Expedia and IHG proposed the OFT to change their restrictions. The OFT accepted the proposal, but it was later rejected by higher authority at a tribunal.

In April 2015, French, Swedish and Italian competition authorities accepted a proposal by Booking.com to drop its "rate parity" clause and thereby allow competitor travel agents to offer lower hotel prices than Booking.com. Booking.com further agreed to extend and apply its proposal across all EU states. Hotels are still prevented from discounting prices directly on their own websites. In April 2015, the European Union warned that Booking.com is one of several internet firms that may have reached market dominance beyond the point of no return.

In March 2017, a Turkish court halted activities of Booking.com in Turkey due to a violation of Turkish competition law in a case filed by the Turkish Association of Travel Agents TÜRSAB. The ruling blocked the website in Turkey; however, website and application can be used from foreign countries to make reservations for hotels in Turkey.