Hotwire.com

Top7 is where your favorites lead you to

Discover What You'll Love Next.

Travel Websites

Location:

San Francisco, CA

Foundation:

2000

Homepage:

http://www.hotwire.com/

People who love Hotwire.com also love:

The Top7 Taste Machine

in Travel Websites

Ranked by 16 people

Top ranked in this topic:

Expedia, TripAdvisor, Booking.com

Times Ranked

TopScore

About
Hotwire is a discount travel website that offers low prices on airfare, hotel, rental car, and vacation packages by selling off unsold travel i... (more)

Hotwire is a discount travel website that offers low prices on airfare, hotel, rental car, and vacation packages by selling off unsold travel inventory at discounted prices. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Hotwire, Inc. is an operating company of Expedia, Inc. . Expedia also operates Hotels.com, ClassicVacations.com, and TripAdvisor.com.  History Hotwire was launched in 2000 by Eric Grosse, Karl Peterson, Gregg Brockway, and Spencer Rascoff and by six major airlines: American, Northwest, Continental, America West (now US Airways), and United. They were funded by a leading private equity firm, Texas Pacific Group (TPG) with an initial $75 million investment. Prior to its formal launch, it was codenamed Purple Demon. In September 2003, IAC/InterActiveCorp announced its acquisition of Hotwire.com for $663 million dollars. (Expedia spun off from IAC in 2005.) Hotwire's co-partners under IAC included Citysearch, Evite HSN, Ticketmaster, LendingTree, RealEstate.com, Entertainment.com, and Match.com. In 2007, J.D. Power and Associates Independent Travel Web Site Satisfaction StudySM recognized Hotwire for ranking "Highest in Customer Satisfaction for Independent Travel Web Sites" for the second year in a row. In 2009, they were given the 2008 award for the third time in a row. Hotwire first launched with opaque airline tickets. They started selling opaque hotel and rental cars a few months later. Package offerings started in 2003. In 2004, Hotwire began to offer select retail travel products. In June 2007, Hotwire removed all airfare booking fees.  Method of operation When hotel rooms, airline seats, or rental cars go unsold, travel companies use Hotwire to fill them. Hotwire does not identify the participating companies until after the purchaser has paid so as not to directly compete with regular retail sales of the travel partners. This sales model is known as "opaque." According to the Hotwire web site, they deal with brand-name travel companies exclusively. This is  (less)

See more on:

Wikipedia

Amazon