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
The online travel booking industry was one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with some apps reporting more than 70 percent less traffic and bookings than 2019. It took two years for most online travel agencies, hotels, and airlines to see a return to form, although for some the levels of revenue and occupancy are still below 2019 figures. Booking Holdings and Expedia Group are the two juggernauts of the online travel booking industry, and account for about 60 percent of all trav...| 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
Launched three years after Uber, Lyft was originally a long-distance car-pooling business, launched by Logan Green and John Zimmer. While Zimride, named after the transportation culture in Zimbabwe (the co-founder’s last name is a coincidence), was the largest app of its type, both co-founders quickly started looking for ways to improve daily engagement. The solution was to begin offering shorter rides in cities, with passengers and drivers connecting. It wasn’t long before the Zimride se...| 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