旅游专家: PRICELINE.COM

中图分类号：F713.36 文献标识码：A 文章编号：1003-2738（2011）11-0249-01

Introduction: is an Internet-based transactional service that offers products in two categories: a travel service and a personal finance service. The travel service offers leisure airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, packaged vacations and cruises. The personal finance service markets home mortgages, refinancing and home equity loans through an independent licensee.省略 uses the new ebusiness model for the whole website, especially its special travel services called Name Your Own Price®, which enables customers to save money on a wide range of travel-related items.省略 in the beginning years was successful.省略 launched in 1998 as an online ticketing service matching customers to flights. The website was immediately successful with more than 30,000 ticket sales in its first two months.省略 signed on its first airline company, Delta. Walker, the former president of Citicorp handed over the reins of the company to Richard Braddock.省略 a boost in legitimacy. He also helped overcome the airlines' resistance.省略 like US Airways, American Airline and United Airline. By the beginning of 1999, the company was booking orders for more than 1,000 airline tickets and 1,000 hotel rooms per week. The company's first quarter sales that year neared 200,000 tickets, some 50 percent more than it had sold in its first nine months.省略.com.省略 did several new experiments, such as selling gasoline and groceries, the online auction business with Yard Sales, and selling long distance telephone service and automobiles.省略) However, all of these experiments were terminated in 2002.省略 licensed its “Name Your Own Price®” travel system to eBay.省略 is best known for its special service in the US.省略's overall business, up from 20% in 2005.省略 shifts its model to the Europe and Asia.省略 based on, which leads a huge business success.省略, StudentUniverse.省略. Although the developing speed of business using this model was far beyond people’s expectations, people never thought that turn it upside down to a C2B model can also lead an organization to success in the business world. Under the customer-to-business model, any customer sells a product or service to a business over the Internet.省略 is such as travel website that based on this new C2B model, and also grows at a high speed under this ebusiness model.省略 has a special travel service called Name Your Own Price®, where travelers would name their price for airline tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals and vacation packages. It allows customers to give their desired price of any items or services, and then it will search suppliers who can offer this price through their database and network, finally lead both parties to a win-win situation.

How does Name Your Own Price® work? First of all, a buyer need to enter the trip details such like the times and locations for departure and arrival. After choosing the specific information, the buyer can apply his desired price on the ticket. Sometimes airlines would like to accept low bid because they face the prospect of an empty seat and no revenue. If being rejected, the buyer has to try again at a higher price, different dates or destinations. The more a traveler can offer, the more he increases the chances to get a satisfied ticket.

Name Your Own Price® was considered as a revolution in mode of doing business in information age. It is developed based on economic theory of the relationship between price and value. That is, the closer to the deadline of one product, the less its value will be. Theoretically, when the product reaches its deadline, the value will be zero.

Applied on airline or hotel industry, the closer to the deadline to check in, the less value of ticket or room will be. In other words, suppliers sometimes will offer their goods and services in a very low price due to the decreased utilities. Once the airline takes off or the room is still empty after 12:00 pm, their value turns to be zero.省略 said to the reporter, “For airline companies, when it is close to the deadline, the marginal cost of selling another ticket and take another passenger is just the food served, while at this time the marginal revenue will reach the maximum point. For hotels, the marginal cost of selling the last room is just the bathroom items, electricity and water fee.” Thus, one more last ticket or last room can lead to additional profit to an airline or a hotel.省略 itself.省略 would save up to 50% compared to the other leading travel sites.省略, bid has not only brought a big business success, but also has created a successful public reflection.省略, people gather together through Internet to discuss and share their experience of using bid to get low price deals. More and more people are becoming experts of using Name Your Own Price® to benefit their travel.省略, created . It is a website for travelers to learn how to bid effectively and save more money.

Therefore, the C2B model, especially the Name Your Own Price ® system, has lead a great profit and also created a successful public image for it.省略, the first thing that comes to mind is its well-known Name Your Own Price® system. Just as mentioned above, it is the best choice for value-conscious travelers and ideal for any type of traveler who has to take a last-minute trip and needs a high-quality hotel room at a budget-friendly price. All customers need to do is to consider an acceptable price, and Name Your Own Price® will take care of the rest. According to a research from The New York Times, it shows that generally it will save customers 40% to 60% off the regular price of hotels and up to 30% on a rental car.

Customers can also take advantages of its Big Deal Guarantee service.省略 not only guarantees the lowest price, but also ensures that buyers will get a great deal. For example, when a customer finds a lower price or better package than what he has booked, he can notify it through customer service at any time up until the day before check-in.省略 will pay a $25 bounty and give that customer a $50 Vacation Package coupon.

Through checking out the PriceBreakers® of the site, travelers can find plenty of discounts everyday. Those discounts are last-minute deals, which are handpicked by site and displayed daily to offer travelers the best promotions. Just like the Big Deal Guarantee, customers can get the refund of the price differences and $50 Priceline Vacation Package coupon, if they find a lower price within 24 hours after booking.省略 also protects customers’ benefits by using its Pricedrop Protection.省略 will automatically search for other travelers who might have booked the same flight for less, right up until the day of the departure ensuring the customer to get the best possible offer on airfare from .省略 will refund the difference in cash for $300.

iPhone and Andriod users can now book hotel rooms by using Priceline's Hotel Negotiator application on their smart phones and they can even get hotel rooms for 75% off regular Priceline rate. This application is available and free from the iTunes app. store and the Android market. Therefore, people can conveniently book air tickets or hotel rooms wherever they are.省略 can save tons of money on air tickets or hotel rooms for their customers, there are still several downsides for using it. First of all, all the fees are nonrefundable.省略 contracts with most of airlines that do not allow for refunds.省略 also needs to be paid upfront. Once the bid is accepted and credit card is charged, there is no turning back. The customers can hardly change their schedules after ordering, and it is also impossible to get a refund for any reason.

Price reflects value, thus the cheapest one may bring lots of dissatisfactions.省略 limits its service to flights. Domestic flights always depart at any time between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. and arrive as late as 12:30 a.m. In that way, travelers have to waste an entire day for arriving their destinations, especially for the international flights, which may make travel becomes much more inconvenient.

Another con associated with using the Name Your Own Price® system, is that, customers are not bidding on what specific thing they really need. When a customer enters his credit card information and begins to use the system, it will automatically charge him if he finds a room. In addition, there are few selections for shoppers to find a specific brand of among hotels. Of course, it is also possible to see that the system cannot find such a room on that low price.省略 can make a poor choice of services on both hotel rooms and travels for shoppers.省略 customers in their least desirable rooms in order to squeeze their cost, and some hotels are rated higher in Priceline than they really are. For example, a traveler named Frank who used the Name Your Own Price® found his hotel was actually several miles outside of the zone, so that he had to rent a car to go there. Therefore, the total cost is even more than paying the full price of the hotel room where he actually needed. As what Mark Kahler, a budget travel guide, says, “You may not like a certain airline but if Priceline assigns it to you then that's what you have to travel with.省略 partner airline. Although travelers can change planes, they must stay on the same airline or one of its codes share partners, and must get there with no more than two stops each way.省略 helps travelers obtain discount rates for travel-related items such as airline tickets and hotel rooms.省略 facilitates the provision of travel services by its suppliers to its customers, providing conveniences and saving a lot of money for users to plan their vacations.省略 has its unique competitiveness, there are still some deficiencies. Travelers need to weigh the pros and cons carefully before deciding whether or not to use it.

Works Cited

[1]Kahler, Mark.省略 Pros and Cons." Budeget Travel (2011).

[2]Morrison, Scott.省略 Shifts Model in Asia." Wall Street Journal (2010).

[3]Paige Baltzan, Amy Phill. Information Systems. McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2010.省略.com. 17 April 2011 .

[5]Tedeschi, Bob.省略 Sales Fall More Than Expected." The New York Times (2003).