Priceline To Buy OpenTable For $2.6 Billion 43
An anonymous reader sends this news from Bloomberg:
Priceline Group Inc. stepped up its acquisition spree by buying OpenTable Inc. in a deal valued at $2.6 billion, adding restaurant bookings to an online travel business already spanning flights, hotels and cars. The all-cash offer of $103 per share for the popular Internet restaurant reservation company is 46 percent higher than OpenTable's closing price yesterday. The deal is expected to be completed in the third quarter, the companies said in a statement today. Priceline is buying a company that seats over 15 million diners per month across more than 31,000 restaurants via online bookings.
In non-surprising news (Score:5, Funny)
William Shatner handled the negotiations.
"He's dipped, Jim!" (Score:2)
sorry, but somebody had to do it.
here come mystery reservations (Score:2)
a 4 star mystery restaurant at a time of our choosing for 50% off regular price
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That sounds kinda fun...
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That sounds kinda fun...
Concur.
I'd go to a fixed price mystery dinner if the fixed price were attractive enough.
In a Bubble (Score:4, Insightful)
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I was thinking the same thing. There was a slashdot article a few weeks ago asking if we were in another tech bubble, and I was like, nah.....
However now, I am not so sure. This is like the rest of these multi-Billion dollar deals, for companies I have never heard of, and probably like most people on slashdot consider myself pretty savvy insofar as tech news goes...
Obsolete (Score:3, Funny)
Too bad restaurants are soon to be obsolete with 3D printing!
What "ass"tounding value (Score:2)
2.6 Billion. Really ?
Holy shit, maybe I should create some fairly non descript website that some hipsters use and then sell it for a whole frigging lot more than it will probabily ever bring in in revenue.
I have no idea how these people make these values, but they are totally not based on reality.
We are so totally heading towards a tech bubble burst. Unfortunately, it is my pension that will suffer when it goes pop and a few millionaires walk away smiling with a load of cash.
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they have a back end solution as well
combined with priceline you will be able to reserve and prepay most of a vacation to a city
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i live in NYC
95% of restaurants here are nothing special and if you took a blind taste test with similar foods you wouldn't know the difference
Re:What "ass"tounding value (Score:4, Interesting)
You clearly have no clue what OpenTable is and what it solves.
It's a seating and reservation management platform - an essential need for the vast majority of non-casual restaurants. It's implemented as a hardware/software solution that they install on premise, so it works without a network connection.
In urban markets, they are pretty much a de facto standard, despite being expensive and archaic. Their website and mobile apps drive so many reservations that restaurant managers are more than willing to pay the hefty fees. Those consist of an installation fee (hundreds $), monthly maintenance fee (hundreds $), and per-reservation fee ($1 - $10 per PERSON).
As a technologist working in the restaurant industry, I really dislike them because both their consumer and front of house software sucks so much. That said, they're a real business, with real revenue, solving real problems, for real customers. So yeah, go make a "website for hipsters" and wait for your $2.6bn payout, since it's so easy.
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Open Table's fees become much more tolerable when you go through a 3rd party that integrates it; they work out special deals for the 3rd party, so they can bundle it cheaply (or free) with other services.
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"it works without a network connection"?
Funny then how reservation informatoin about my friend's restaurants aren't available when they lack internet connectivity.
Re: What "ass"tounding value (Score:2)
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Holy shit, maybe I should create some fairly non descript website that some hipsters use and then sell it for a whole frigging lot more than it will probabily ever bring in in revenue.
You definitely should. Stop back by when you're done and let us know how it works out.
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They're pretty big in the digital marketing world for restaurants. They've got a number of clones popping up now trying to mimic some of the better aspects of the business.
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you can't reserve tables at fast food or chain restaraunts
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applebees and olive garden don't count
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Also once a restaraunt hits that fabled 1 year mark, reservations and foot traffic diminish reather precipitously.
Let me guess, LA or NYC? Because here in Cleveland, despite having a booming number of good to great restaurants, the top few hundred places all require a reservation if you want a decent slot on a Friday or Saturday evening even though some of them have been open for decades.
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Interesting take. From a consumer perspective, I really won't eat anywhere (other than grabbing a sandwich) that doesn't take reservations, or where I'm not sure that I'll get a table on arrival. Life's too short to wait in restaurant lines. I'm perfectly happy, however, when restaurants require a deposit to hold a reservation. For example, I have dinner plans for tomorrow night. Restaurant (booked via OpenTable, FWIW), runs a $100 per person authorization on my credit card at the time of the reservati
26 Billion (Score:1)
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He was likely referring to this:
bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-13/priceline-to-buy-opentable-in-deal-valued-at-2-6-billion.html
tech.slashdot.org/story/14/06/13/1445252/priceline-to-buy-opentable-for-26-billion
Both violate accessibility/usability rules ("rules") for URLs (sorry, "URIs").
Bubble bubble... (Score:3, Insightful)
The last dotcom bubble left us with huge amounts of equipment, dark fiber and Aeron chairs. I wonder what we're going to get out of this one?
It's a shame to see it happening again, but I guess I'll just sit back and watch like I did last time. I still wonder why I don't jump in and make my millions at the right time during these bubbles, but whatever....
Uber, Lyft, WhatsApp, Twitter and now OpenTable are going to be the next pets.com, boo.com and webvan.com.
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doesn't matter, zero money is lost on these. of course, there are winners and losers in the game
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The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. In order to profit from a bust it is very helpful to be rich enough to force a crash.
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Priceline Bids for Meals (Score:1)
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TIP and service fee not included.
Pro tip be a non Tipper at your own risk.
580 employees (Score:2)
Not bad 2.6B for 580 -> ~4,5mil/employee.
FB though is 165B for 6820 -> 24mil per.
Where I work is ~1mil/employee
Has the bubble formed yet?