Articles tagged “opentable”

The OpenTable redesign is meant to counter the dreaded commoditization curse. There's a lot more money and value in being an integral part of the dining experience for consumers and widening the business relationship with restaurants than merely being a reservations platform.

Don't expect the buying binge and consolidation in online travel to slow down any time soon. Expedia, the Priceline Group and TripAdvisor all intend to keep on acquiring puzzle pieces in 2015. HomeAway anyone?

TripAdvisor wants to establish itself as the leading restaurant reservations platform in Europe before OpenTable gets around to showing up in earnest.

Watching how Priceline Group, HomeAway, and Expedia interact in 2015 may turn out to be a very interesting look at a fascinating contact sport.

Given the consumer base of sister companies Booking.com, Agoda and Kayak, OpenTable now has the chance to expand beyond its traditional local orientation into a dining app for travelers, as well. Some of its learnings and technologies can also apply to hotels and tours and activities.

Being a leading online travel company these days means adding expensive pieces to the portfolio, and both the Priceline Group and Expedia Inc. are signaling that their acquisition sprees are far from being finished.

Will Booking.com be as good at business services for hotels as it is for selling their rooms, and will a move into enterprise services for hotels be a huge distraction? We are about to find out.

The Priceline Group is moving much closer to Ctrip with a minority stake and CEO Darren Huston points to a series of additional moves in China in the next few years. Ctrip, though, hasn't always played well with other partners so it remains to be seen whether familial relations between these new second cousins will be long-standing.

Without a doubt, Yelp, which marks its 10th year this summer, is in play regardless of how company officials seek to downplay all of the merger and acquisition activity swirling around them.

Let the games begin as the Priceline Group's acquisition of OpenTable, and TripAdvisor's acquisition of LaFourchette officially place restaurants firmly in the "travel" space in terms of mindset. Yelp anyone?