Booking.com Introduction

Founded in 1996, Booking.com B.V. is owned by the Priceline Group, the leading online accommodations booking website in the world. According to the Booking.com website, they have more than 1,000,000 rooms reserved online every day. Furthermore, Booking.com guarantees the best prices for everyone and every kind of property, from hostels, bed and breakfasts to apartments and five-star luxurious hotels.

Headquarters in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Booking.com has international offices operated in over 70 countries and the website is available in 42 languages. With this customized design, consumers can not only choose their own languages, but also select the currency they prefer. Booking.com wants to help the consumers, no matter leisure or business travelers, to book the accommodations with the best prices.

Booking.com is a user-friendly website, travelers only need to type the places they want to visit and the website will show suitable accommodations with best prices and benefits.

Travelers can choose whether they want to stay in the hotels, hostels or B&Bs and compare their prices easily, you can also save your favorite places on Booking.com which is very

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convenient. In addition, Booking.com presents photos and complete descriptions of every accommodation, featuring advantages and facilities, travelers can even have discounts sometimes.

According to the information on the website, travelers using Booking.com to reserve their stays can gain the following benefits:

 Lowest Rates

Booking.com guarantees the best price for every traveler, whether you want to stay in a pretty luxury five-star hotel or a low-cost hostel.

 No reservation fees

Booking.com doesn’t charge any booking fees or administration fees; sometimes you can even cancel your reservation within a specific time free of charge.

 Secure Booking

The Booking.com reservation system is solid and secure. Booking.com puts many efforts to protect every traveler’s privacy by encrypting credit card and personal information.

Recently Booking.com has launched a brand new search method called “passion search,”

which is a brilliant online platform enables travelers to explore and search for remarkable destinations based on their passions (see Figure 1. 5). Simply type the attractions you want to see and the “passion search” will show destinations featuring these attractions, for example, if you type “northern lights” you can see places such as Iceland, Sweden, Norway, and Finland…etc. Passion search is benefit for travelers who are eager to do something, but have no idea where to go.

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Figure 1. 5 ("Booking.com,")New Search Method “Passion Search”

People travel for several kinds of purposes; most of them travel for leisure activities, but the numbers of business travelers are growing rapidly. The main reason is that employees of multinational companies have to deal with oversea clients, and also go on business trips to other regional offices or even in other countries for meetings, office works and trainings.

Another important reason is that the mobile phone, Internet and the facility to work virtually from any place make business travelers keep in touch with office, family, and their friends while travelling.

Facing the changes of business travel, Booking.com has responded with highly tailored services designed to give business travelers an easier and worthy experiences, as well as better value for employers (see Figure 1. 6). Realizing these trends and listening to consumers’ specific requests, Booking.com has made their products best empower business travelers around the world to effortlessly search, book, and enjoy the best accommodations to stay when traveling for work.

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Figure 1. 6 Booking.com for Business

According to new research released by (Booking.com, 2015), taking a spontaneous vacation could be the key to relieving pressure, being happier, and adding more passion into our lives. Booking.com uses the slogan that “Maybe money really can buy you happiness – in the form of a spontaneous vacation.” The survey has polled 6,620 respondents across six countries about their attitude towards spontaneity, the result has revealed that 79% of people agree that taking a spontaneous trip boosts their happiness, and 65% of people claim that it makes them more productive at work. This research has indicated that people are paying more attention on traveling since they believe taking a vacation can reduce stress from the exhausting work life and enhance their living standards. In other words, the travel and tourism industry is becoming much more important than before, and the travel-related company should take it seriously.

In conclusion, Booking.com did put much effort on making their website more user-friendly to consumers. In addition, Booking.com will keep up on the trend and launch

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creative searching method, which make consumers easier to search what they are looking for.

Last but not least, travelers can write reviews on Booking.com, whether they’re positive or negative opinions, as long as it’s authentic (see Figure 1. 7). Authentic review means that if you have actually stayed in the property, you can post the reviews. To prevent travelers from writing unreal reviews, Booking.com has drawn up the policy that only those who actually make a booking from Booking.com have rights to write reviews. The figure below shows how the Booking.com review system works. Those user-generated online reviews on Booking.com are the data that we are going to analyze in this paper.

Figure 1. 7 Booking.com Review System