101–110 of 232 posts
So many of the travel sites are owned by Priceline. Here is wikis list: Booking.com Priceline.com Agoda.com Kayak.com Cheapflights Rentalcars.com momondo OpenTable I am surprised they haven't bought Expedia or the other major sites.
This is stupid. Really. Here we are in a world where the companies that own the assets (you know, the things that cost a lot of money) are worth less than the things that don't own anything. This doesn't seem "right" or "fair" in the sense that Priceline should be a middleman, unable to exercise any or all pricing power because it does not control the assets producing the revenue. I wonder how long this can last?
It's been this way for much of history. Middle men, such as merchants before the industrial age, were the wealthy class. They were also despised by many who thought it was 'unfair'.
This is stupid. Really. Here we are in a world where the companies that own the assets (you know, the things that cost a lot of money) are worth less than the things that don't own anything. This doesn't seem "right" or "fair" in the sense that Priceline should be a middleman, unable to exercise any or all pricing power because it does not control the assets producing the revenue. I wonder how long this can last?
I have a hard time with the idea that SpaceX sits somewhere around $12B and Tesla around $50B (with most people arguing even that is absurd). So to value Priceline at $100B is insanity.
They may be overvalued, however they blatantly are providing an extremely valuable service. And if it were easy to replace or compete with (ie something of low actual value), the airlines etc would have already cut out Priceline and would keep the $2+ billion in annual profit for themselves (they've tried and failed repeatedly to cut out Priceline, which further speaks to its immense value to consumers).
I'm more surprised that you're holding up Tesla as a counter example to fluff valuations given their present valuation versus other car companies with actual immense profit such as GM or BMW.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not exclusive to Priceline, and it's called Opaque pricing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opaque_travel_inventory Basically, in exchange for a lower price, the hotel guest gives up their right to choose which hotel they want to stay at. And for the hotel, they get to sell lower priced rooms without advertising lower prices, enabling them to engage in price discrimination so they don't lose out on the people will…
What "kind of guest" does this attract? I sometimes do this, especially in ski towns. I also sometimes negotiate at rural hotels to get a fade rate. Do hotels hate me?
So many of the travel sites are owned by Priceline. Here is wikis list: Booking.com Priceline.com Agoda.com Kayak.com Cheapflights Rentalcars.com momondo OpenTable I am surprised they haven't bought Expedia or the other major sites.
Basically the only big travel sites not owned by Expedia or Priceline are TripAdvisor (previously spun off from Expedia) and AirBnB.
I am amazed. In fact, I still remember when someone told me in 2011'ish that they are worth ~30b$; I had the same reaction. Does anyone know how they justify their valuation? Is it mostly by acquiring other smaller companies (Kayak etc.) and who are the other big competitors to Priceline?
I think the value of these two companies is that people load up a few of these sites thinking they are price shopping but in the end the money goes to the same pot. Priceline is the same.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually no. Why is it so popular? It seems to have fewer features than hipmunk.... Not to knock them, though, it's a hard problem to solve well from an interface and integrations perspective.
Personally, I reach for Booking.com because they're simply better than most competitors. They have a huge inventory of hotels, and they have a functional, fairly responsive search interface that isn't annoying. The last part is important — there's little in terms of popups, ads, intrusive upsells, flashy UI elements, and so on. It's not the most modern, but it's very well optimized towards finding stuff. For example,…
Things like: showing fully booked hotels in results by default, showing me how many people are looking at the booking RIGHT NOW!, popups saying where the last person booked from (that's not a flashy UI element to you?), big bold messages like "Limited supply in Madrid: 3 properties like Happy Hostel are already unavailable on our site! ", "You missed it!" next to rooms that you can't get.
As someone else commented, they AB test the crap out of that website because they know that this stuff gets hotels booked like nobody's business. I put up with it because if you ignore that stuff, the information is well laid out, and the prices and experience is otherwise good. Nowadays I check Booking.com and then go straight to the hotel.
This is stupid. Really. Here we are in a world where the companies that own the assets (you know, the things that cost a lot of money) are worth less than the things that don't own anything. This doesn't seem "right" or "fair" in the sense that Priceline should be a middleman, unable to exercise any or all pricing power because it does not control the assets producing the revenue. I wonder how long this can last?
Priceline's value is no different than the value provided by Airbnb. They make the vast majority of their money being a middleman for hotels, not flights, and in turn have made it much easier for people to package everything together and get a better deal though the partnerships their partners already have with each other. Additionally, comparing hotel pricing does put major pressure on prices, as most travelers know…
I am amazed. In fact, I still remember when someone told me in 2011'ish that they are worth ~30b$; I had the same reaction. Does anyone know how they justify their valuation? Is it mostly by acquiring other smaller companies (Kayak etc.) and who are the other big competitors to Priceline?
This is stupid. Really. Here we are in a world where the companies that own the assets (you know, the things that cost a lot of money) are worth less than the things that don't own anything. This doesn't seem "right" or "fair" in the sense that Priceline should be a middleman, unable to exercise any or all pricing power because it does not control the assets producing the revenue. I wonder how long this can last?
priceline and companies like it sell convenience
therefore priceline and companies like it sell you your time back. Specifically, they are selling back the time to people who derive greater value from doing something other than trying to book tickets cheaply. Middlemen sell you time you'd spend searching in a search space they specialize in.
Q.E.D.