Their website offers over 57,000 hotels in more than 15,000 destinations. Over 80 properties in New Zealand already have inventory listed.
Booking.com established in 1996 and employ over 935 staff.
The company has offices in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Cambridge, Cape Town, Dubai, Dublin, London, Loulé (PT), Lyon, Munich, Norwalk (USA), Paris, Rome, Vienna, Warsaw....and now an office in Sydney.
CEO, Jeffrey Boyd (pictured) plans to take on wotif.com in their own patch. Time will tell if booking.com's model can capture the imagination of the traveling public and suppliers down under.
By Martin Kelly
Editor, Travel Trends
Booking.com –one of the world’s biggest online accommodation brands – has identified Australian hoteliers as a major sales target, setting up an office in Sydney and declaring that its international scope “destroys” Wotif.com.
“We’re building up supply in Australia and we think we have a compelling sales pitch to the hotels there,” said Jeffrey Boyd, CEO of Priceline, which owns Booking.com.
Boyd told delegates at the PhoCusWright conference: “We have a global calling card that destroys Wotif.com … we’ll certainly give that market a go.”
Later, Boyd professed respect for Wotif (“it’s a blue chip stock – think of that, an online agency that’s a blue chip stock”) but was confident of gaining traction among hoteliers Down Under.
Unlike other US online business, Boyd said Booking.com is going with a “straight commission model but can’t tell you the actual rates” however indicated they were above 10%. The Booking.com website is getting tiny numbers from the Australian consumer market and Boyd says the company needs to build up local inventory before marketing the brand.
http://www.traveltrends.biz/ttn446-bookingcom-sets-up-in-australia-takes-on-wotif
