Priceline 2015 Annual Report Download - page 7

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KAYAK. We provide restaurants with reservation management services and consumers with the ability to make restaurant reservations at participating restaurants
through OpenTable.
Booking.com. Booking.com is the world's leading brand for booking online accommodation reservations, based on room nights booked, with operations
worldwide and headquarters in the Netherlands. As of February 15, 2016, Booking.com offered accommodation reservation services for over 850,000 properties in
over 220 countries and territories on its various websites and in 42 languages, which includes approximately 390,000 vacation rental properties (updated property
counts are available on the Booking.com website). Vacation rentals generally consist of, among others, properties categorized as single-unit and multi-unit villas,
apartments, "aparthotels" (which are apartments with a front desk and cleaning service) and chalets and are generally self-catered (i.e., include a kitchen), directly
bookable properties. Accommodation providers participate in Booking.com, which operates primarily under an agency model, by filing rates and information about
the property in Booking.com's proprietary extranet. In addition, Booking.com offers website and other marketing services and business analytics to accommodation
providers as part of its BookingSuite initiative.
Priceline.com. Priceline.com offers online travel reservation services primarily in the United States and is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Through priceline.com, we offer consumers hotel, rental car and airline ticket reservation services, as well as vacation packages and cruises. Priceline.com is a
leader in the "opaque" travel reservation business through its pioneering Name Your Own Price ® and Express Deals ® discount hotel, rental car and airline
reservation services. We describe our Name Your Own Price ® and Express Deals ® discount travel services as "opaque" because certain elements of the service,
including the identity of the travel service provider, are not disclosed to the consumer prior to making a reservation. We believe that the combination of
priceline.com's retail and opaque models allows it to provide a broad array of options to value-conscious consumers.
KAYAK. KAYAK, headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, provides an online price comparison service (often referred to as "meta-search") that allows
consumers to easily search and compare travel itineraries and prices, including airline ticket, accommodation reservation and rental car reservation information,
from hundreds of travel websites at once. KAYAK derives revenues from advertising placements on its websites and mobile apps and from sending referrals to
travel service providers and OTCs. KAYAK offers its services in approximately 40 countries, with the United States being its largest market.
Agoda.com. Agoda.com is a leading online accommodation reservation service catering primarily to consumers in the Asia-Pacific region, with
headquarters in Singapore and operations in Bangkok, Thailand and throughout the region. Accommodation providers participate in agoda.com, which operates
primarily under a merchant model, by filing rates and information about the property in agoda.com's proprietary extranet.
Rentalcars.com. Rentalcars.com is a leading worldwide online rental car reservation service and is headquartered in Manchester, England.
Rentalcars.com offers a primarily merchant, online retail and opaque rental car reservation service allowing consumers to make rental car reservations in
approximately 46,000 locations throughout the world, with customer support provided in 40 languages. Consumers using rentalcars.com can book a full range of
vehicles online through rentalcars.com's website or mobile app, or they can reserve their cars by phone.
OpenTable. In July 2014, we acquired OpenTable, a leading brand for booking online restaurant reservations. Headquartered in San Francisco,
California, OpenTable provides online restaurant reservation services to consumers and reservation management services to restaurants. OpenTable does business
primarily in the United States, though it intends to continue to invest in expanding its international offerings.
Marketing and Brand Awareness
Booking.com, priceline.com, KAYAK, agoda.com, rentalcars.com and OpenTable have established widely used and recognized e-commerce brands
through aggressive marketing and promotion campaigns. Both our online advertising expense and offline advertising expense have increased significantly in recent
years, a trend we expect to continue. During 2015, our total online advertising expense was approximately $2.8 billion , primarily related to the use of online
search engines (primarily Google), meta-search and travel research services and affiliate marketing to generate traffic to our websites. We also invested
approximately $215 million in offline advertising during that period. We intend to continue a strategy of aggressively promoting brand awareness, primarily
through online means although we also intend to increase our offline advertising efforts, including by expanding offline campaigns into additional markets. For
example, building on its first offline advertising campaign, which it launched in the United States in 2013, Booking.com has begun offline advertising campaigns
in other markets, including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Brazil and Japan. We expense the substantial majority of our advertising
activities as the expense is incurred, which is typically in the quarter in which reservations are
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