Agoda
Agoda.com or just Agoda is a Singaporean online travel agency and metasearch engine for hotels, vacation rentals, flights, and airport transfer. It is owned by Agoda Company Pte. Ltd., headquartered in Singapore, and it is currently a subsidiary of Booking Holdings. Agoda’s bookings are made via its website and mobile app which are available in 38 languages. As of June 2021, Agoda lists 2.5 million properties worldwide, including private holiday home rentals. Agoda also offers iOS and Android apps for hotel and property owners.  History. Agoda was co-founded in Singapore in 2005 by school friends Michael Kenny  and Robert Rosenstein. Prior to Agoda, Michael Kenny started two other hotel booking websites, PlanetHoliday.com and PrecisionReservations.com, but combined companies, launching Agoda.com in 2005. In 2007, Agoda was acquired by Booking Holdings (formerly The Priceline Group). After several iterations of the website, Agoda launched iOS and Android mobile apps for booking hotels in July 2011. After Booking Holdings acquired Israel-based startup Qlika in 2014, the Qlika team joined Agoda to automate and scale its marketing systems. Following the acquisition of Qlika, senior executives at Agoda decided to expand the company's footprint in the country. A research center opened  shortly afterward in the city of Tel Aviv. In May 2016, Booking Holdings acquired Taipei-based startup WooMoo. The startup was the creator of POP, a mobile app that focused on prototyping. The acquisition led to the WooMoo team relocating from Taipei to Agoda's office in Bangkok to work on mobile app development. That same month, Agoda reviews began to appear on Google search results. In 2017, Agoda initially refused to give a refund to a customer that booked a non-existent hotel. The incident gained traction on social media, and Agoda eventually paid a refund following a fraud  complaint filed with the Thai government. Agoda began exploring non-hotel accommodations to appeal to millennials. The move came after research suggested "customers booking non-hotel accommodation are growing about 30 percent to 40 percent faster than people booking hotels." During an interview with Bloomberg, Chief Executive John Brown identified China as a major market Agoda was in the process of expanding into. In 2017, Agoda, among other hotel sites, was subject to a probe by the Competition and Markets Authority in the United Kingdom. The probe was related to "concerns about hidden charges, pressure selling tactics, misleading discount claims  and the order in which results appear on the site pages." Agoda agreed to change how it operates in response to this probe. In 2018, CEO and co-founder Rob Rosenstein became the Chairman of Agoda and a Strategic Advisor to Booking Holdings. John Wroughton Brown, the COO, was promoted as the new CEO of Agoda, with Chief Product Officer Omri Morgenshtern, who joined the company as part of the Qlika acquisition, named as the new COO. Also in 2017, the Tourism Minister of Thailand called for Agoda among others to drop illegal and unregistered hotels. Agoda was the main  target of criticism among those criticized, and its success is part of what drove the Ministry of Tourism & Sports to create a competitive hotel booking website. In 2018, Agoda cooperated with the Taipei City Government's request to remove illegal and unregistered Taipei hotels from its listings. Agoda faced legal action from the Turkish Travel Agencies Association due to alleged unfair competition in relation to the country's competition law. It faced a potential ban as part of this lawsuit. In 2018, a customer who booked through the website had items stolen from her hotel room due to poor security . Although online travel agents are not typically liable in such cases, Agoda provided a goodwill refund, however, for legal reasons, the customer's defamatory review was removed from the site. A security consultant discussed how trying to avoid defamation charges in this way could potentially result in fewer negative reviews, or in reviews where negativity was diluted. Agoda claims it will remove any profanity, discriminatory statements, plagiarism, spam, links, and offensive material from reviews, and justifies strict moderation by saying criticism must be constructive, and viewpoints must be "honest, but fair." Soon after, the company announced interest in pursuing greater  business emphasis in Israel and Europe, particularly expanding its Tel Aviv-based data science team, increase sales, and purchase promising Israeli startups. In 2019, Agoda launched a brand refresh with a new visual identity that saw the introduction of a streamlined logo, custom font, and cartoon mascots called Agojis based on the circles in the logo. The company said the changes reflected its growth from a start-up into a global brand. The company currently employs more than 4,000 people in 30 countries, with its headquarters in Singapore and an office in Bangkok. In 2019, Agoda was criticized for difficulties  with customers removing their homes from the website. The customers cited customer service issues. In 2022, parent company Booking Holdings announced that as of July 1st 2022, Omri Morgenshtern - previously CPO and COO - would replace John Brown as CEO. Product Overview. Agoda offers over 2.5 million properties globally. In South Korea, Agoda offers a Day Use product, which allows travelers to book rooms for just a few hours. In addition to its accommodation booking platform, Agoda also has its own flight product. This was introduced in October 2019. The Agoda VIP program enables participating properties to offer exclusive discounts to  Agoda VIP status customers, categorized as VIPs because they have made a minimum of five bookings on Agoda in the past 24 months and are less inclined to cancel bookings. Hotel partners have VIP badges displayed on their property on both Agoda.com and on the Agoda mobile app. Agoda offers a "Book Without a Credit Card" option for hotels in Indonesia and Philippines, and is the first online digital travel booking platform to enable Australians to book and pay for their holiday accommodation via interest-free instalments. In November 2020, Agoda launched a page dedicated to Alternative State Quarantine hotel  packages in Thailand for foreign travelers arriving during the pandemic. After closing international borders in April 2020, Thailand's COVID-19 policy required foreigners to spend 14 days/15 nights in state-approved hotels in Bangkok, with two PCR tests and daily temperature monitoring. Agoda also has quarantine hotel portals for the Philippines, Indonesia, India, and Hong Kong. Agoda Homes is the company's list of privately-owned accommodations, which include houses, apartments, and villas. As of 2021, Agoda claims to list more than 1.5 million private accommodations worldwide. During the pandemic, the company introduced the ability to book homes for extended  stays of 30–90 days in keeping with government advice for travelers to practice social distancing. In 2018, Agoda launched airport transfers on its website, followed by flight booking in 2019. Advertising and partnerships. Agoda launched its biggest integrated campaign in July 2020 – “GoLocal” which was aimed at stimulating domestic tourism across its the Asia Pacific and global markets. This was quickly followed by “GoLocal Tonight” in Indonesia, a program offering an additional 30% discount for same-day bookings on participating properties. That same year Agoda announced partnerships with governments and Destination Management Organizations leveraging technology, marketing expertise, and reach to  help boost local economies by opening up tourism beyond traditional tourist areas in Thailand and Japan. Agoda also announced partnerships with AirAsia, as well as blockchain-based travel booking platform, Travala, listing over 600,000 properties on both these partner sites and making travel bookings payable in up to 30 cryptocurrencies on the latter. In November 2020, Agoda launched a partnership with Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health to sell packages for travelers’ mandatory COVID-19 quarantine, making Thailand one of the first countries in the world to digitalise the quarantine booking process. A partnership between Agoda and JTB in 2020 saw  the revamp of the Rurubu Travel and JAPANiCAN sites, providing a white-label booking engine in exchange for access to local hotel inventory. As a result, Agoda was able to list an additional 20,000 Japan properties. COVID-19. In May 2020, Agoda had to announce the layoffs of 1,500 people due to the COVID-19 pandemic.