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Priceline now worth $100B

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Re: Priceline now worth $100B

#221

Post by lotsofpulp »

planteen wrote: post #68
lotsofpulp wrote: post #22

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?

The big problem is it attracts hookers/pimps/drug dealers, and a lesser problem is that it attracts price conscious customers, but that's fine since if you are opening up that channel for customers, then you need their business. But it's not worth it if you're also getting the aforementioned problem parties.

It would be unreasonable for a hotel to hate you just for asking for a negotiated rate, but hotels (and any business) will hate you for being annoying, especially when they bring up stupid reasons like "well I paid $x in nowhere, kansas"....

Re: Priceline now worth $100B

#222

Post by lotsofpulp »

sdy wrote: post #122
lotsofpulp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Priceline doesn't have pricing power, they are just reaping the rewards of their branding and whatnot. There may also be some value for the consumer in that Priceline can consolidate their travel plans for flights/hotel/rental car in one place. However, I find I get better service when I transact directly with the vendor, whether it be hotels, airlines, or rental car agencies. If you want the lowest prices on all the…

Is this a joke? I searched roomkey on a couple of marriott hotels and they offered $5 off (about 2% off). I got much better price on priceline.

You might be looking at different room types, or different rates. Or, I frequently find that Priceline and Expedia show a certain rate, but once you click it, they will actually ping the real rate and say something like "rates have changed recently" or something like that.

If you can legitimately find an advertised price lower than the hotel's actual website (roomkey.com is owned by the hotel chains themselves), then you can even get free and deeply discounted nights:

http://hiltonworldwide3.hilton.com/en/best-price-guarantee/o...

http://www.marriott.com/online-hotel-booking.mi

https://www.ihg.com/hotels/us/en/customer-care/best-price-gu...

Re: Priceline now worth $100B

#223

Post by shimon »

sbarre wrote: post #164
dragontamer wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft commoditized PC hardware No. Tandy (aka Radio Shack), Dell, Compaq, and so forth commoditized PC Hardware. Microsoft made the OS a commodity, reducing the cost of an OS from thousands of dollars to only $100. Android / iOS have done the same thing except reduced the cost to $0. The hardware manufacturers don't make as much as the software guys. Because people and habits are tied to the software, not hardw…

I think OP meant that Microsoft commoditized PC hardware through software , in other words by making Windows the thing that people wanted to have, and the hardware under it could be interchangeable. Most people didn't care if they had a Dell or a Compaq, as long as it ran Windows. So in this case: I don't care what hotel I stay in or who rents me a car, as long as I know that through Priceline I'm getting a good deal…

Yes, that's what I meant. Windows was a commoditizing force on PC hardware makers. Microsoft did the commoditizing here by taking their market power that came from controlling the thing people wanted most, and enforcing standards that hardware makers had to meet in order to reach the market MS controlled.

It's the same in travel, where the airlines and hotels are selling commodity products, and the high value is in the brokers people trust to select among the commodities. But the brokers here are also in still competitive positions, because it's still easy for consumers to switch compared to something like an OS or social network.

Re: Priceline now worth $100B

#224

Post by fitchjo »

anigbrowl wrote: post #179
fitchjo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the eyes of who? To the company and its owners, if my brand allows me to sell an equivalent widget for a higher margin, how is that not value? Just because value can be created or destroyed by a single action doesn't mean that value is somehow less valuable. To the user, if I derive greater pleasure because I believe I have bought a more valuable product (attributable only to the brand), just because there is an e…

To the company and its owners, if my brand allows me to sell an equivalent widget for a higher margin, how is that not value? Just because value can be created or destroyed by a single action doesn't mean that value is somehow less valuable. Soap bubbles are beautiful but you wouldn't pay money for one because you know how ephemeral they are. The value in brands is the expectation of future revenue that will inure to…

My comment was not to say that there are not situations where brand plays less of an influence, only to provide a counterpoint to the parent's comment that "brands provide no value." There are certainly industries or products where brands are less valuable, but that doesn't diminish those industries or products where brands do provide real value to both the buyers and sellers (although not always both each time and certainly not in equal amounts).

Re: Priceline now worth $100B

#225

Post by jpetso »

eldavido wrote: post #204
drinkzima wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really it's booking.com is worth ~$95B and the rest of those brands combined are worth ~$5B (OpenTable just got written down from an accounting perspective). There is a huge general misunderstanding in the profitability of directing hotel bookings vs flight bookings or other types of travel consumables. Rate parity and high commission rates mean that directing hotel rooms is hugely profitable and Expedia (hotels.com,…

To further corroborate, I'm working in hotel software at the moment and these sites drive a _ton_ of traffic. 10-15% commissions on every booking they process. booking.com is such a piece of shit in so many ways: strip-mall aesthetics, horrible data quality (firsthand knowledge here), huge commissions for hotels, and yet, it's a fantastic business. Probably a good lesson or two here.

Usability on booking.com is decent, search, filters and map view are useful. Things have been getting better elsewhere, so it probably doesn't stand out as much as it did years ago.

Either way, if prices are roughly the same on most sites, I'll go for something that just lets me get the job done. I couldn't care less about aesthetics and commissions if other places can't give me a much better discount while also not getting me angry using their site.

Re: Priceline now worth $100B

#226

Post by fma »

wheaties wrote: post #16

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?

To add to that...Tesla is worth more than General Motors. The market cap for Tesla is $57 billion. General Motors is $52 billion.

General Motors produced 10 million cars in 2015 (per Wikipedia). Tesla produced 47,000 so far in 2017.

I understand the stock market is 'forward looking'...but huge difference there.

Re: Priceline now worth $100B

#227

Post by dfrey »

tlogan wrote: post #177
dopamean wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience in tech (only a few years, I came from finance, and before that construction, weirdly) people are super cynical and often believe that they know more about _any_ business because they can write some code or something similar. I have never been around more people who consistently think they know better than everyone else. This was a surprising thing for me because I assumed engineers would be more cur…

No - it is just about age. HN readers are younger thus they think they know more. Old people will just say: "I don't know about that" [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvT_gqs5ETk

This reminded me of a chunk from an [interview with Linus Torvalds](http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/linux-at-25-qa-w...)

Stephen Cass: You’re a much more experienced programmer now versus 25 years ago. What’s one thing you know now that you wish your younger self knew?

Linus Torvalds: Actually, I credit the fact that I didn’t know what the hell I was setting myself up for for a lot of the success of Linux. If I had known what I know today when I started, I would never have had the chutzpah to start writing my own operating system: You need a certain amount of naïveté to think that you can do it. I really think that was needed for the project to get started and to succeed. The lack of understanding about the eventual scope of the project helped, but so did getting into it without a lot of preconceived notions of where it should go.

Re: Priceline now worth $100B

#228

Post by awkwarddaturtle »

misterbwong wrote: post #112

If you were to tell a non-HNer that Kayak, Booking, Priceline, CheapFlights, OpenTable, and other large websites are worth 100B combined , I don't think they would even blink an eye. Come here and the top discussion thread is about how little Priceline does, how they're "just middlemen", and that they don't add any value. It's clear that HN (and techies as a whole, I assume) highly discounts the value of users, marke…

> If you were to tell a non-HNer that Kayak, Booking, Priceline, CheapFlights, OpenTable, and other large websites are worth 100B combined, I don't think they would even blink an eye.

Really? I think most people would be shocked.

> It's clear that HN (and techies as a whole, I assume) highly discounts the value of users, marketing, brand, and distribution.

That isn't what give pcln "value". The value is just a reflection of the boom stock market and a handful of hedge funds/etc bidding up the price of the stock.

Once the recession starts and a few of the hedge funds decide to cash out, the "value" could shrink considerably.

Re: Priceline now worth $100B

#229

Post by awkwarddaturtle »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #73
Fej wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing he doesn't really need the money at this point, especially given his age.

I really don't understand this line of thinking. Are old people incapable of spending money? Is what they chose to do with capital of less consequence? Even if they do have one foot in the grave, they have a right to legacy.

> Are old people incapable of spending money?

What are they going to spend money on? William Shattner is 86 years old.

> Even if they do have one foot in the grave, they have a right to legacy.

Uh... Who cares? You are talking about something that has no value.

I'm sure shattner would trade all of his money to be 20 years old again.

Re: Priceline now worth $100B

#230

Post by GFischer »

dopamean wrote: post #186
camhenlin wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seasoned programmers who have worked on software across several industries are probably pretty good at understanding and translating day to day business tasks into automated code. To do that you almost have to understand a business inside and out. That's their job. If more people were humble, less would get done

That make's plenty of sense but I have a hard time believing that so many of the commenters here have the experience you just described. I know it is certainly not true of the people I interact with offline on a regular basis. Also, I'm not sure I really buy the argument that because you can automate some "day to day business tasks" means you know better about how a business should be run. Automating a process that a…

Honestly, I've seen so many truly awful managers that I'd trust that the engineers "know better about how a business should be run"... from an operational standpoint.

However, there's the magical "sales" and "public relations" side which those same awful (operationally) managers usually excel at.

When those managers have a strong CIO or operations guy by their side they're a killing team, but I've seen cases where they get sweet-talked by an atrocious ignorant CIO (and they can't see it because they're not knowledgeable themselves).

I've also seen strong, well rounded CEOs... and many were engineers transitioned to management roles (with MBAs, etc).

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