Trip.com's Nearly Quarter Century Odyssey as a Can't Lose Travel Domain, Right?
Skift Take
Buying a compelling travel domain like Trip.com and thinking it ensures success is like the people who buy a restaurant and think they can run it because they are foodies. Several major travel companies squandered the Trip.com domain because it was a side hustle. Moral of the story? A brand is only as good as the real-world business behind it.
As Chinese online travel agency Ctrip gets set to change its name to Trip.com Group Ltd. next month, the company — and the world — may not be fully aware of the very hot-and-cold history of the brand under a half dozen or so owners over 23 years.
The hit-or-miss track record of companies using the Trip.com domain, of course, is not a reason in itself to abandon that brand or embrace it because history shows it's the business behind a brand that makes or breaks it. Not just a name — and it's a pretty good name for a travel business.
After all, incompetent executives, unwise business decisions, and half-hearted commitments can screw up the best of brands. Having a great brand name doesn't guarantee a business win. But a short, simple, business-elucidating online brand like Trip.com that's search engine friendly and traffic inducing sure can't hurt, and can be worth millions of dollars.
In the history of the Trip.com domain since it was purchased by the owner of Trip Software Systems in 1996 and debuted under different ownership as a travel website in 1998, the brand helped generate an investor-friendly business acquisition by then-independent public company Galileo International in 2000. Three corporations and a venture capital firm had invested $51 million in Trip.com before Galileo bought the 81 percent it didn't already own for $214.4 million in cash and stock, according to a financial filing.
The founder and then-Trip.com CEO Antoine Toffa claims, however, that the total value of Galileo's investment and ultimate purchase was $326 million in cash and stock, and Crunchbase cites that figure, as well.
Either way, it was a quick and decent return for Trip.com's investors, including serial entrepreneur Toffa, who was a minority shareholder.
A hotel and online travel powerhouse of that era, Cendant, then acquired Galileo in 2001, paired Trip.com with its CheapTickets brand, but shuttered Trip.com two years later. Orbitz Worldwide, which had likewise been acquired by Cendant and spun out later by Travelport, revived Trip.com in 2009, but mothballed it once again in 2013.
It's too soon to determine whether Trip.com has nine lives like a cat, but Gogobot bought the Trip.com brand in 2016 from Expedia Group, and rebranded to Trip.com. Expedia had laid claim to the Trip.com brand a year earlier when it acquired Orbitz Worldwide.
Pending shareholder approval, Ctrip is slated to change its name to Trip.com Group Ltd. next month because
