Priceline's CEO says people looking to book online just love to shop
Skift Take
Boyd of Priceline understands all too well that travelers are driven to shop and compare prices, and that hotel rates change so fast and are so complex that there is always the opportunity to find a deal.
Booking.com may be facing a hotel-rate-fixing probe in Europe, but the CEO of parent company Priceline says "there is always the opportunity to find different prices."
And, even when there isn't, as is the case with airfares in the U.S., there is a strong traveler impulse to shop, says Priceline CEO Jeffery Boyd.
Boyd's line of defense was two-fold: 1) Hotel-pricing is complex and there is plenty of room to find bargains, and 2) Even when there aren't many price differences, such as is when all the online travel agencies having basically the same airfares, consumers still love to shop so Priceline would not suffer as it provides its own unique user-experience.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="350"] Priceline CEO Jeffrey Boyd at PhoCusWright conference in 2009. Photo by PhoCusWright.[/caption]
Rate fixing? Not us
Booking.com strongly denies that it is guilty of any kind of rate-fixing effort in the UK, as alleged by the Office of Fa
