Podcasts Technology Acquired Episode 41: Booking.com with Jetsetter & Room 77 CEO Drew Patterson

Episode 41: Booking.com with Jetsetter & Room 77 CEO Drew Patterson

Published: July 26, 2017, 4:25 a.m.

Acquired trains its lens on the \u201csecond or third best acquisition of all-time\u201d, Priceline\u2019s 2005 purchase of Booking.com. Our heroes are joined by friend-of-the-show and former Jetsetter & Room 77 CEO Drew Patterson to help understand how this little-known startup from The Netherlands grew into the largest travel company in the world, with nearly $8B in annual revenue. Was this deal even better than Instagram??? We debate, hotly.\xa0 \xa0

Sponsors:
ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredsn
Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig24
Vanta: https://bit.ly/acquiredvanta


Topics covered include:\xa0
  • The biggest startup you\u2019ve never heard of (in the US), Booking.com, and its parent company Priceline (yes, the William Shatner Priceline)
  • Booking\u2019s founding in Amsterdam in late 1996: by recent college graduate Geert-Jan Bruinsma
  • Skift.com\u2019s Definitive Oral History of Online Travel\xa0
  • The travel industry's GDS's (\u201cGlobal Distribution Systems\u201d) and the development of Sabre\xa0
  • How Bruinsma raised the initial money for Booking: by emailing anyone he know who had an email address\xa0
  • OTAs ("Online Travel Agencies\u201d) and how they operate; the "merchant model" versus the \u201cagency model"
  • The role of search in online travel\xa0
  • Bill Gurley on \xa0Conversion: The Most Important Internet Metric of All
  • Expedia\u2019s early flirtation with Booking, and decision not to acquire the company
  • Priceline head of M&A Glenn Fogel\u2019s vision for how powerful the agency model for OTAs could become in Europe
  • Priceline and Glenn's 2004 acquisition of Active Hotels in the UK, followed by the 2005 acquisition of Booking for $133M and the combination of the two businesses into Booking.com\xa0
  • Booking\u2019s incredible growth in the decade since the acquisition, from less than 20M room-nights to over 500M, and $7.8B in revenue in 2016

\xa0 The Carve Out:\xa0