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

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

Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra

Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry

Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25






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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