Priceline Group Changes Name to Reflect Booking.com's Power
Skift Take
The name change to Booking Holdings reflects the reality that Booking.com dominates the parent company's business. Although the parent company still calls Connecticut home, the balance of power shifted long ago to Amsterdam.
The Priceline Group no longer has an identity crisis because it changed its name Wednesday to Booking Holdings Inc.
The company, with six major brands including Booking.com, Priceline.com, Kayak, Agoda, Rentalcars.com and OpenTable, will scrap its PCLN stock symbol and start trading under the handle BKNG on Nasdaq February 27. It will still be headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut and no operational changes come with the new corporate identity.
Company officials mulled the change for years because too many people, including potential investors, associated the Group with its original incarnation in the form of U.S.-focused Priceline.com even though Amsterdam-based Booking.com accounts for "a significant majority" of Booking Holdings gross bookings and operating profit, the company said. Booking Holdings declined to say precisely how much.
The Acquisition of Booking.com
The root of the name change is tied to Priceline.com's acquisitions in 2004 and 2005 of Active Hotels and Bookings B.V., which were the greatest acquisitions in online travel history and probably among the top three in Inte
