One of the leading online travel booking portals, Priceline.com is best known for its trademarked Name Your Own Price service and its iconic pitchman, William Shatner. While the website functions as a full-service online travel agency, where travelers can search for and book discounted flights, hotel rooms, cruises, rental cars, vacation packages and tours, its Name Your Own Price service lets customers bid for even greater discounts on flights , hotel rooms and car rentals.
The Basics
Customers can go the traditional route and search for the lowest listed prices on disclosed flights, hotels, packages and the like. Or they can take the Name Your Own Price plunge. Using the former method, the search engine allows consumers to quickly narrow their searches using criteria such as availability, rates and personal preferences. For the Name Your Own Price service, having flexible travel plans is key as bidders try to beat Priceline because do not know the airline or hotel they're bidding on until the bid is accepted, and then have no option to cancel and get a refund. Priceline's Name Your Own Price feature is considered an opaque service because customers are kept in the dark about the airlines and hotels offering discounted flights and rooms until their bid is accepted.
Other Major Services
Inside Track is a personalized service that can follow fare trends for a desired location; a market-specific "best days to fly" calendar and price alerts to customers' e-mail accounts. Pricebreakers are discounted travel deals picked by Priceline travel experts and posted daily - each is a limited-time offer, and a clock ticks off the time remaining to take advantage of the offer. Travel content includes Zagat Guides restaurant reviews, and the site offers a flight-status tracking feature for flights.
A Few Competitors
- Hotwire.com is another online travel site that offers both opaque bookings and disclosed retail travel products.
- Expedia.com is the world's leading online travel booking site.
- Orbitz.com is another popular online travel booking site.
What Makes Priceline Noteworthy
Priceline built its name-brand identity on its Name Your Own Price feature but is competing with top full-service online travel sites with features such as its no-fee booking. It is a feature that keeps Priceline fares lower than those at other online booking services, in many cases. Its Inside Track technology also helps customers tease out the best deals and where to locate them.
A Brief History
Priceline.com launched in 1998 as an online ticketing service matching customers to flights. Consumers bid for flights and named the price they were willing to pay but had no say over the choice of airline or travel times. In the beginning, Priceline sold discounted seats for just two airlines, TWA and America West. By 2000, it had deals with Delta, US Airways, American and United.
Ownership
Priceline.com owns and operates several travel websites, including Travelweb.com, Lowestfare.com, FlyCheap.com and BreezeNet.com. The company headquarters is at 800 Connecticut Ave., Norwalk, Conn. 06854.
