Online Travel Investment - Priceline.com
December's AAA report projects 92.3 million people will travel 50 miles or more during the holiday, a 3.1% increase compared to 2009. With more people using online travel site to book their travel itineraries, let's look at the public traded online travel companies such as Expedia.com (Nasdaq:EXPE) which was mentioned yesterday.
Another major player in the online travel industry is Priceline.com(Nasdaq:PCLN) who is best know for its "name your own price" approach to book airline tickets and hotels. The company's annual revenues have been growing very rapidly for the past few years from $1.1 billion in 2006 to $2.3 billion in 2009, a 100% plus gain in just three years. As the revenue for the first three quarters of 2010 has already reached $2.3 billion, the annual revenue of 2009, this year would be another year of monsterous growth for Priceline.com. And the financial storm did not seem to affect the growth at all as the company still experienced a $400 million dollar increase in revenue for both 2008 and 2009. The net income looks even more impressive with a 580% growth from 2006 to 2009.
The success to Priceline.com is not just the online travel boom and its super cheap price, my personal and my friend's experiences with the site in terms of services have also been excellent. My recent booking at a 3 star hotel in California was almost a nightmare as the hotel gave us a king bed although we told the hotel ahead of time that we had 3 guests. Unfortunately the hotel was overbooked so we ended up getting a free roll-away bed. Not a pleasant stay but nothing we could do. However when I called Priceline.com the next day to complaint about the hotel, I ended up getting the free night stay. That 3 star hotel didn't even offer a free night stay. So what this experience taught me was every time instead of book directly from hotel, go through Priceline.com only.
Another major player in the online travel industry is Priceline.com(Nasdaq:PCLN) who is best know for its "name your own price" approach to book airline tickets and hotels. The company's annual revenues have been growing very rapidly for the past few years from $1.1 billion in 2006 to $2.3 billion in 2009, a 100% plus gain in just three years. As the revenue for the first three quarters of 2010 has already reached $2.3 billion, the annual revenue of 2009, this year would be another year of monsterous growth for Priceline.com. And the financial storm did not seem to affect the growth at all as the company still experienced a $400 million dollar increase in revenue for both 2008 and 2009. The net income looks even more impressive with a 580% growth from 2006 to 2009.
The success to Priceline.com is not just the online travel boom and its super cheap price, my personal and my friend's experiences with the site in terms of services have also been excellent. My recent booking at a 3 star hotel in California was almost a nightmare as the hotel gave us a king bed although we told the hotel ahead of time that we had 3 guests. Unfortunately the hotel was overbooked so we ended up getting a free roll-away bed. Not a pleasant stay but nothing we could do. However when I called Priceline.com the next day to complaint about the hotel, I ended up getting the free night stay. That 3 star hotel didn't even offer a free night stay. So what this experience taught me was every time instead of book directly from hotel, go through Priceline.com only.
posted by Stock Geek at
9:04 AM
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