Priceline.com

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Priceline.com
Type Public
Traded as NASDAQ: PCLN
S&P 500 Component
NASDAQ-100 Component
Founded 1997[1] (online 1998)
Headquarters 800 Connecticut Avenue, Norwalk, Connecticut
Key people Jeffery H Boyd
Employees 5,700 (2013)[2]
Website Priceline.com

Priceline.com is an American company and a commercial website that claims to help users obtain discount rates for travel-related purchases such as airline tickets and hotel stays. The company is not a direct supplier of these services; instead it facilitates the provision of travel services by its suppliers to its customers. It is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, United States.

Priceline was founded by Jay S. Walker, who left the company in 2000.[3] Hong Kong company Cheung Kong Holdings later purchased a significant portion of Priceline's stock.[4]

History

Priceline first became known for its Name Your Own Price system, where travelers would name their price for airline tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals and vacation packages. While the purchaser can select a general location, service level and price; the hotel, rental car company and/or airline (as well as the exact location of the hotel and the exact flight itinerary) is disclosed only after the purchase had gone through, with no rights to cancel. In some cases the flights are worse than the published flights on their website and multiple customers have warned and proclaimed Priceline as a "scam".[citation needed]

Priceline's cut of the proceeds was the difference between the price an individual named and the price charged by the service establishment. More recently, it has added a more traditional model where travelers are presented prices and are also told the name of the establishment. Travelers can still choose to name their price for airline tickets, hotel rooms and rental cars. The number of airlines, hotels and car rental company participants in the name your own price program has increased as these suppliers utilize this opaque market Priceline created to sell their perishable inventory without lowering prices through other traditional sales channels. Priceline now also sells discounted cruises, as well as tours and attractions.

In 2000, Priceline and certain of its officers were alleged in violation of Securities Exchange Act by issuing materially misleading information.[5]

Priceline.com also experimented with selling gasoline and groceries under the Name Your Own Price model in 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble, through a partially owned affiliate, WebHouse Club. Priceline also got into the online auction business with Priceline Yard Sales, where individuals would use the Priceline system to haggle for various second-hand items and trade them in person. Priceline also sold long distance telephone service and automobiles under the Name Your Own Price model. All of these experiments were terminated in 2002. Another experiment, the Name Your Own Rate system for home loans, continues under a license with EverBank. In 2002 Priceline licensed its "Name Your Own Price" travel system to eBay.

During November 2007, Priceline “permanently” eliminated all booking fees on published airfares.

Spokespeople

William Shatner

Since 1997,[6] Priceline's official spokesman has been William Shatner, who agreed to do the spots in exchange for stock in the company.[7] The arrangement turned out to be quite profitable for Shatner, who sold much of the stock shortly before its value plummeted in the dot-com bust and has since made approximately $600 million from Priceline.com. (This reported sum has been met with some skepticism from the financial press.[8]) An early ad campaign featuring Shatner had him belt out popular songs in spoken word, in the style of his album, The Transformed Man. He was "replaced" in 2004 by his Star Trek co-star, Leonard Nimoy. Shatner still appeared in spots for Priceline, running into Nimoy as his replacement. When that campaign ended, Shatner again became Priceline's sole spokesperson.

In 2007, an ad campaign by Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners had Shatner take on the role of the Priceline Negotiator. In commercials that began airing January 22, 2012, Shatner's Negotiator character apparently dies as a bus falls off a bridge and explodes.[9] Subsequent ads have featured his "spirit," still advertising Priceline.com from beyond the grave. In August 2012, Shatner was brought back in a commercial located on a stormy, cloudy beach, parodying the end of the film Point Break. A man, apparently an investigator, stands next to Shatner. Shatner is holding a wooden surfboard, wearing a suit with shortened pants and pitching the new way of booking a hotel. He states that surfing is his life now and "we'll see where the waves take me. Sayonara!" and goes charging into the waves.

Priceline has been parodied on The Tonight Show by Jay Leno and in multiple Saturday Night Live skits. In a September 2008 SNL skit, during the opening monologue by Olympian Michael Phelps, Shatner rose from the audience to give Phelps tips on product endorsements.[citation needed]

Theresa Caputo

In June 2012, Theresa Caputo, star of the television show Long Island Medium, appeared in a commercial for Priceline.com, in which she portrayed herself "connecting" with the late Priceline Negotiator character previously played by William Shatner.[10] However, this commercial has sparked controversy, since the commercial appears to make light of the Native American belief of smudging.[11]

JREF President DJ Grothe released an open letter calling out Priceline.com for endorsing Caputo, stating, "It is difficult to watch the show and not feel heartbroken for those who are desperate to hear from the departed... and even more so if they are being manipulated by a charlatan." Grothe urges Priceline.com to "invite... your new representative" to take the James Randi Million Dollar challenge and prove her credentials.[12]

Kaley Cuoco

In January 2013, Kaley Cuoco from the sitcom The Big Bang Theory joined William Shatner as his fictitious daughter in Priceline.com commercials [13]

Acquisitions

Active Hotels

In September 2004, Priceline acquired Active Hotels Ltd., a hotel booking service in the European market, for £90 million.[14]

Booking.com

In 2005, Priceline acquired Amsterdam-based Booking.com, a competing reservation service operating primarily in Europe.[15]

Agoda.com

In November 2007, Priceline acquired Singapore-based Agoda,[16] an online hotel reservations service which provides a service similar to Priceline's but specializing in Asia Pacific. Agoda's network includes 27,000 hotels in Asia and more than 168,000 worldwide.[17]

TravelJigsaw

In May 2010, Priceline acquired TravelJigsaw, an on-line car rental service.[18]

Kayak

In November 2012, Priceline announced that it had agreed to acquire Kayak.com in a stock and cash transaction, paying approximately $500 million in cash and $1.3 billion in equity and assumed stock options.[19][20] Kayak will continue to operate independently as a Priceline Group company.[21]

Priceline branding

Priceline, Booking.com, Active Hotels and Agoda are separately branded for dissimilar demographics. However, each company is regulated and integrated into the Priceline business model. Priceline is also the most talked about travel booking site online in the Brand Passion Index.[22]

Criticisms

Priceline does not include resort fee amounts in the bidding. Therefore, it's possible to win a bid for a hotel and then be forced to pay mandatory resort fees (for example, often $25 per night for resort hotels in Las Vegas).[23]

Priceline is one of the companies that uses the services of Wiki-PR, a public relations firm specialized in editing of Wikipedia that has been accused of subverting Wikipedia content for business interest. Leslie Cafferty, Priceline's vice president of corporate communications and public relations, explained, "We are using them to help us get all of our brands a presence because I don't have the resources internally to otherwise manage."[24][25]

References

  1. ↑ "Priceline.com Incorporated Rankings". Hoovers. Retrieved December 16, 2011. 
  2. ↑ "About Priceline". Priceline.com. Retrieved May 7, 2013. 
  3. ↑ Post, Tom (September 18, 2012). "Priceline.com Cofounder Jay Walker On Turning The Art Of Giving Into A Systematic Business". Forbes. 
  4. ↑ "Ownership". MSN Money. Retrieved September 1, 2012. 
  5. ↑ "Class Action Lawsuit Commenced Against Priceline.com Inc. (PCLN) By Bernstein Liebhard & Lifshitz, LLP.". October 2000. Retrieved Jul 16, 2013. 
  6. ↑ http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/154000320/4029964.html
  7. ↑ Carlson, Nicholas (May 4, 2010). "William Shatner Has Made $600 Million Shilling Priceline.com". Business Insider. 
  8. ↑ "William Shatner Lives Long and Prospers -- but Did He Really Make $600 Million?". DailyFinance. Retrieved March 26, 2011. 
  9. ↑ Elber, Lynn (January 19, 2012). "Goodbye to William Shatner — again". News & Record. Associated Press. Retrieved January 19, 2012. 
  10. ↑ "TV's Long Island Medium Theresa Caputo Channels The Dearly Departed Negotiator In New Priceline.com TV Spot". Reuters. June 25, 2012. Retrieved November 1, 2012. 
  11. ↑ "Priceline: Remove the Long Island Medium smudging commercial from the air". Change.org. 
  12. ↑ Grothe, DJ. "Priceline.com: Will You Prove Your Spokesperson Worthy for a Million Dollars?". The Huffington Post. Retrieved August 15, 2012. 
  13. ↑ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/01/09/cuoco-shatner-priceline-ads/1819799/
  14. ↑ "Active Hotels Ltd., Sale to Priceline.com". TravelMole. September 23, 2004. 
  15. ↑ Levy, Ari (February 28, 2012). "Priceline.com’s Shares Rise After Profit, Sales Exceed Analyst Estimates". Bloomberg Businessweek. 
  16. ↑ "Priceline.com Acquires Asian Online Hotel Reservation Service Agoda Company". Agoda. November 10, 2007. 
  17. ↑ "About Agoda?". Agoda. Retrieved May 7, 2008. 
  18. ↑ "Priceline.com acquires TravelJigsaw". Reuters. May 18, 2010. 
  19. ↑ "Priceline.com Agrees to Acquire KAYAK Software Corporation". Princeline.com. November 8, 2012. Retrieved November 8, 2012. 
  20. ↑ Smith, Olivia (November 8, 2012). "Priceline to buy Kayak for $1.8 billion". CNN Money. Time Warner. Retrieved November 8, 2012. 
  21. ↑ "Priceline to acquire Kayak in $1.8 billion deal". Boston.com. NY Times Co. November 8, 2012. Retrieved November 8, 2012. 
  22. ↑ Brand Passion Index for Travel Booking sites NetBase, March 30, 2011
  23. ↑ Hotels add resort fees to priceline
  24. ↑ "Is Wikipedia for Sale? | Motherboard". motherboard.vice.com. 2013-10-20. Retrieved 2013-10-20. 
  25. ↑ Arthur, Charles (21 November 2013). "Wikipedia sends cease-and-desist letter to PR firm offering paid edits to site". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 November 2013. "Among companies whose entries are said to have been edited by the company are those for Priceline and the communications company Viacom" 

External links

  • Defunct services shown in italics
  • Category: Travel Search Engines
United States Companies of the NASDAQ-100 index
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.