Booking.com
Booking.com is a Dutch online travel agency for lodging reservations & other travel products, and a subsidiary of Booking Holdings. It is headquartered in Amsterdam. The website has over 28 million listings. The site is available in 43 languages. History. Booking.com was formed when Bookings.nl, founded in 1996 by Geert-Jan Bruinsma, merged in 2000 with Bookings Online, founded by Sicco and Alec Behrens, Marijn Muyser and Bas Lemmens, which operated as Bookings.org. The name and URL were changed to Booking.com and Stef Noorden was appointed as its CEO. In 1997, Bruinsma wanted to post an ad in "De Telegraaf , the Dutch newspaper with the highest circulation. The ad was rejected since De Telegraaf" only accepted ads with a phone number, not with a website. In 2002, Expedia refused to buy bookings.nl. In July 2005, the company was acquired by Priceline Group (now called Booking Holdings) for $133 million, and later it cooperated with ActiveHotels.com, a European online hotel reservation company, purchased by Priceline Group 9 months earlier for $161 million in Sept 2004. In 2006, Active Hotels Limited officially changed its name to Booking.com Limited. The integrations of Booking.com and Active Hotels successfully helped the parent improve  its financial position from a loss of $19 million in 2002 to $1.1 billion in profit in 2011. This acquisition was praised by some social media as “the best acquisition in Internet history” since no other acquisition in the digital travel market had been shown to be as profitable. Darren Huston was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Booking.com in September 2011 by its parent company, and also served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Booking Holdings since 1 January 2014 until his resignation on 28 April 2016 after an at-work relationship was revealed. After Gillian  Tans resigned in 2019, Glenn Fogel took over as CEO. Corporate affairs. Marketing. Partnerships and agreements. In August 2012, Ctrip (now Trip.com Group) a Chinese online travel company, formed a partnership with the company to allow it to access Booking.com's global portfolio. Panorama Group, Indonesia's largest tour and travel company, formed a strategic partnership with Booking.com in 2013 to access the website's portfolio of hotels. In October 2014, Ural Airlines partnered with Booking.com. Advertising. In January 2013, Booking.com's first brand campaign, ‘Booking.yeah’, was launched online and aired on television networks for the U.S. market. Booking.com worked  with the advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam for this campaign. In 2014, the company launched advertising campaigns in Canada, the U.K., and Germany. Booking.com and its subsidiaries were the top spenders in the "Travel & Tourism" category for Google Awards in 2016, spending $3.5 billion in PPC. Operation. Applications development. In November 2010, the company launched a hotel and lodging mobile app for the iPad. Booking.com launched the same mobile app on Android the following year in February. The company launched the first global last-minute hotel app, ‘Booking.com Tonight’, designed for iPhone and iPod Touch in April 2012 . The app became available for Microsoft Windows, using Windows 8, in October. The iPhone app was updated with a new function called "Passbook" that same month. The Kindle Fire app became available for download in December. In July 2015, the company launched an improved Android mobile app. Controversies and criticism. Anti-competitive allegations by OFT. In September 2012, the United Kingdom's competition authority, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), issued a statement of objections against Booking.com, Expedia, and IHG Army Hotels. The OFT alleged that Booking.com and Expedia had entered into separate arrangements with IHG which restricted the online  travel agent's ability to discount the price of room only hotel accommodation. Booking.com, Expedia and IHG proposed the OFT to change their restrictions. The OFT accepted the proposal, but it was later rejected by higher authority at a tribunal. Leaks of customer data. In November 2014, it was revealed that criminals were able to obtain customer details from the website. Booking.com said it was countering the fraudsters and refunding customers from the UK, US, France, Italy, the UAE, and Portugal, all of which had been affected. Since the fraud, Booking.com has made changes so data can only be accessed  from a computer linked to the hotel's server. Its teams have also worked to "takedown" dozens of phishing sites, as well as working with some banks to freeze the money mule bank accounts. The website was again targeted by hackers in June 2018. Brand hijacking accusations by German hotelier. In February 2015, an open letter published by German hotelier Marco Nussbaum, co-founder and CEO of the "prizeotel" budget-design hotel brand, was highly critical of Booking.com's "brand hijacking" activity. His letter outlined details relating to Booking.com's use of Google Adwords, and how it was doing damage  to his business. The letter was discussed in specialist media and led to a debate concerning current difficulties and challenges for online distribution within the hotel industry. Prohibitions against offering lower rates. In April 2015, French, Swedish and Italian competition authorities accepted a proposal by Booking.com to drop its "rate parity" clause and thereby allow competitor travel agents to offer lower hotel prices than Booking.com. Booking.com further agreed to extend and apply its proposal across all EU states. Hotels are still prevented from discounting prices directly on their own websites. Allegations of market dominance. In April 2015, the European Union  warned that Booking.com is one of several internet firms that may have reached market dominance beyond the point of no return. Violations of Turkish competition law. In March 2017, a Turkish court halted activities of Booking.com due to a violation of Turkish competition law. Booking.com halted selling rooms in Turkey to Turkish users, obeying the order to block the website. However, the website and application can be used from foreign countries to make reservations for hotels in Turkey. Disputes with hotels in Greece. In July 2019, luxury-hotel chain Aldemar, invoking "practices [by Booking.com] that go against the laws of  the market," terminated its participation in Booking's offerings. The Greek Hotels Association denounced the practice of Bookings.com of charging its percentage fee on the VAT-inclusive full-room price. The company responded that according to the terms of its bilateral agreements with hotels "everywhere," each party to such an agreement is free to walk away from it. Involvement in Israeli settlements. On 12 February 2020, the United Nations published a database of all business enterprises involved in certain specified activities related to the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Golan Heights . Booking.com and its parent company, Booking Holdings, have been listed on the database in light of their involvement in activities related to "the provision of services and utilities supporting the maintenance and existence of settlements". The international community considers Israeli settlements built on land occupied by Israel to be in violation of international law. Authorities denounced the practice of using manipulative techniques. On 16 June 2020 expired the deadline set by the European Commission and national consumer protection (CPC) authorities for Booking.com. The authorities denounced the practice of using manipulative techniques such as hiding sponsoring in the ranking, unduly putting  time pressure on users or misrepresenting rebates etc. Eligibility of registration of trademark. Booking.com attempted to get the term "Booking.com" registered as a trademark but this application was rejected by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as they believed the trademark sought was rather generic in nature and hence that it could not be registered. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and finally the Supreme Court of the United States, all held in the case "Patent and Trademark Office v. Booking.com B. V.  otherwise saying that the term Booking.com", via the suffix ".com" had created an identity that could be differentiated from the generic verb and hence could be trademarked. The Supreme Court went on to say that later if a site along the lines of "flightbooking.com" came along, Booking.com could not sue the site or prevent them from trademarking the name without proof that said trademark causes potential clientele to be confused between the two. Criticism over state aid during Covid-19 pandemic. On April 24, 2020, Booking.com drew criticism when it applied for state aid from under the Dutch government's relief  program for business affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, while paying billions to shareholders, with $6.3 billion in cash on its balance sheet. In response, on May 22, Booking announced that it would not seek further wage subsidies from the Dutch government, and instead look for long term answers. The company soon after decided to lay off 25% of its global workforce, and moved on to collective lay offs of on the Amsterdam workforce approximately 25% of its pre-COVID workforce.