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

15 snips

Jul 26, 2017

Former Jetsetter & Room 77 CEO, Drew Patterson, joins the podcast to discuss the rise of Booking.com, the biggest startup in the travel industry. Topics covered include the founding of Booking.com, the role of search in online travel, Expedia's decision not to acquire Booking.com, and the success of Booking.com after its acquisition. The episode also touches on the challenges of innovation in the travel industry and the potential growth of Bookham.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

Origin of Booking.com

Booking.com started in 1996 when founder Geert-Jan Bruinsma realized US travelers struggled to book European hotels due to language barriers.
He built a simple MVP inspired by Hilton.com's code to enable multi-hotel booking online, initially attracting mostly American users.

ANECDOTE

Bootstrapping Booking.com Funding

To raise initial funding, Booking.com founder emailed everyone he knew with an email address and secured 18 investors.
This grassroots approach raised about 50,000 euros, jumpstarting the company.

INSIGHT

Value of Long Tail Inventory

Booking.com's long tail hotel inventory leads to far greater relevancy and conversion compared to reliance on GDS inventory.
Access to less common, local hotels drives better consumer satisfaction and marketplace success.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Acquired trains its lens on the “second or third best acquisition of all-time”, Priceline’s 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.

Sponsors:

WorkOS: https://bit.ly/workos25
Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry
ServiceNow: https://bit.ly/acquiredsn

More Acquired!:

Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes
Join the Slack
Subscribe to ACQ2
Merch Store!

Topics covered include:

The biggest startup you’ve never heard of (in the US), Booking.com, and its parent company Priceline (yes, the William Shatner Priceline)
Booking’s founding in Amsterdam in late 1996: by recent college graduate Geert-Jan Bruinsma
Skift.com’s Definitive Oral History of Online Travel
The travel industry's GDS's (“Global Distribution Systems”) and the development of Sabre
How Bruinsma raised the initial money for Booking: by emailing anyone he know who had an email address
OTAs ("Online Travel Agencies”) and how they operate; the "merchant model" versus the “agency model"
The role of search in online travel
Bill Gurley on Conversion: The Most Important Internet Metric of All
Expedia’s early flirtation with Booking, and decision not to acquire the company
Priceline head of M&A Glenn Fogel’s 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
Booking’s incredible growth in the decade since the acquisition, from less than 20M room-nights to over 500M, and $7.8B in revenue in 2016

The Carve Out:

Ben: Scott Forstall talking about the original iPhone at the Computer History Museum
David: The Big Sick
Drew: Bloomberg’s Money Stuff by Matt Levine