Expedia was one of the many .com travel websites launched in the mid-1990s, the brainchild of internet entrepreneur Rich Barton, who would go on to found Zillow and Glassdoor. Barton was working for Microsoft at the time and incubated the project inside the tech giant, launching in 1996. Three years later, Expedia was spun off by Microsoft into a public company, with Barton as the CEO. With the dotcom crash of 2000, many recent IPOs fell victim to huge drops in stock market value. American ho...| Business of Apps
When Zillow was founded back in 2004, it was intended to revolutionise the real estate industry. Frustrated with his home buying experience, Microsoft executive Rich Barton hoped to improve the process through online home value estimates and accessible listings. His solution was to launch a modern real estate website. Barton was no stranger to shifting industries online – along with Lloyd Frink, Spencer Rascoff, David Beitel and Kristin Acker, he already had the successful launch of Expedia...| Business of Apps
Vrbo in its current form is a combination of dozens of websites and apps that were under the HomeAway brand until 2020, when Expedia decided to consolidate all short-term rental brands under a single Vrbo website and app. Originally created by David Clouse as a website to book his Breckenridge Ski Resort condo, the website took off for its simplistic (at the time) booking system, which attracted other homeowners who wanted to list their properties for short-term rental. The agreement with hom...| Business of Apps
Like a lot of websites launched in the 2000s, the inspiration for TripAdvisor came to co-founder Stephen Kaufer after a frustrating experience. In his case, it was attempting to plan a family vacation using the tools available at the time. Designed as a comparison website for the entire travel experience – from accommodation to flights to experiences – TripAdvisor quickly became a favourite in North America and Europe. It wasn’t long before American holding company IAC acquired the bran...| Business of Apps
Every year away from the pandemic seems to be a blessing to the travel app industry, which was struck with declines of up to 70 percent in revenue and usage in 2020. Travel apps, which were popular pre-pandemic, have exploded in popularity with many customers using them for the first time in the last four years. For app marketers, this is a key time in the travel app industry. The boon from the end of Covid restrictions is over, but the changes in consumer behaviour between 2019 and 2021 have...| Business of Apps
In a wave of entrepreneurship in the early 2010s, in which every industry was to be transformed through the deployment of technology, Uber and Lyft were born. The two companies are a product of the terrible taxicab ecosystem which existed in California before 2010. People could order cabs over the phone or on the internet, but operators would dispatch them based on their position in the queue, meaning someone could be waiting an hour for the cab to arrive from the other side of town. And if t...| Business of Apps
Travel recommendation app Hopper might be considered the new kid on the block, with downloads and usage growing rapidly in 2021 with the introduction of fintech products aimed at providing more flexibility and security to customers. While it has gained traction in the past year, Hopper has actually been around for close to a decade. It started as travel tool similar to TripAdvisor, in which users could search for a place or activity and check out reviews from the web. The team working on Hopp...| Business of Apps
Booking is one of the oldest online travel agencies still active today, originally launched in 1996 by Geert-Jan Bruinsma as Bookings.nl, which was then merged with Booking.com at the tail end of the dotcom bubble in 2000. At the same time, Priceline.com was falling headfirst into bankruptcy, after declaring a $1.1 billion loss in 1999 and seeing its stock tank from $974 to $7 a share. Somehow, it survived while many other .com websites failed, and in 2006 acquired Booking.com. When the acqui...| Business of Apps
Uber kickstarted the evolution of the taxi market in the early 2010s, when it launched an app which easily connected drivers with riders. In California where the app launched, ordering a cab was a nightmare, so much so that co-founder Garrett Camp had established his own fleet of black cabs to pick him up from bars and clubs. Camp recognised the value of this service, which was less temperamental than waiting on the sidewalk for a cab or waiting more than an hour for someone to pick them up. ...| Business of Apps