Hotwire.com

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Hotwire is a travel website that resells unsold airfare, hotel, rental car, and vacation packages.[1]

Hotwire does not compare rates until after the buyer has finalized the transaction to ensure that their unsold content would be purchased faster[citation needed].

Contents

[edit] History

Hotwire was launched in 2000 by Eric Grosse, Karl Peterson, Gregg Brockway, and Spencer Rascoff and by six major airlines: American, Northwest, Continental, America West (now US Airways), and United. They were funded by a leading private equity firm, Texas Pacific Group (TPG) with an initial $75 million investment[2]. Prior to its formal launch, it was codenamed Purple Demon[3].

In September 2003, IAC/InterActiveCorp announced its acquisition of Hotwire.com for $663 million dollars. (Expedia spun off from IAC in 2005.) Hotwire's co-partners under IAC included Citysearch, Evite , HSN, Ticketmaster, LendingTree, RealEstate.com, Entertainment.com, and Match.com[4].

In 2007, J.D. Power and Associates Independent Travel Web Site Satisfaction StudySM recognized Hotwire for ranking "Highest in Customer Satisfaction for Independent Travel Web Sites" for the second year in a row.[5]

Hotwire's first launched with opaque airline tickets. They started selling opaque hotel and rental cars a few months later. Package offerings started in 2003. In 2004, Hotwire began to offer select retail travel products. In June 2007, Hotwire removed all airfare booking fees.

[edit] Management

Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Hotwire is an operating company of Expedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE). Expedia also operates Hotels.com, ClassicVacations.com, and TripAdvisor.com.

Hotwire's first CEO was Karl Peterson, one of Hotwire's four founding members. Since 2006, Hotwire has been overseen by Hotwire's 2004-2006 CFO Eric Grosse, another one of Hotwire's four founding members. Grosse is a graduate of Harvard Business School.[6]

Hotwire operates with one General Manager and six Vice Presidents on its management team. Hotwire began with 4 employees, and then grew to 80 within months. Currently, Hotwire has 210 employees.

[edit] References

  1. ^ 'Opaque' travel deals down but not out. Smart Travel. Retrieved on 2006-03-02.
  2. ^ Hotwire Launch to Provide Yet Another Way to Offload Cheap Inventory. Retrieved on 2000-09-08.
  3. ^ Can Purple Demon avoid Orbitz errors?. Retrieved on 2000-07-05.
  4. ^ InterActiveCorp grabs onto Hotwire. News.com. Retrieved on 2003-09-22.
  5. ^ J.D. Power and Associates Ranks Hotwire.com Top Travel Site for Second Consecutive Year. MSN Money. Retrieved on 2008-01-23.
  6. ^ Hotwire Management.

[edit] External links