Business Model Canvas PDF
Business Model Canvas PDF
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The travel industry is a $1.3 trillion heavy. And the biggest player by market capitalisation
in this huge pond is the Booking.com’s parent, the Priceline Group. Priceline owns a
number of brands that are all running a platform business model (the most promising
business model right now).
Booking.com and Expedia are the biggest Online Travel Agencies (OTAs). I have
compared their business models here. But this space is becoming more interesting by
the day with an increasing amount of players moving into this space,
including TripAdvisor and Google.
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The Business Model Canvas consists of the 9 categories you see below to describe a
company. Broadly speaking, the left-hand side is the supply side from the business’
perspective and the right-hand side is the customer side.
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Overview
This articles is structured in line with the elements of the business model canvas:
1. Value proposition
2. Key partners
3. Key activities
4. Key resources / assets
5. Customer segments
6. Channels
7. Customer relationships
8. Revenue
9. Cost structure
Overview
Before we get started on Booking.com, let’s have a brief look at the other brands that the
Priceline Group owns:
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Value Proposition
Value Proposition
Platform businesses have two or more customers that they need to provide value to. In
the case of OTAs, these are the travellers and the hotels.
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5. Useful app: the traveller’s journey does not end with the booking. Booking.com’s
app has useful content prior to the booking but increasingly also travel guide
functionality in their app. Also, bookings through apps have multiplied from 2015
onward and are expected to stay in the double-digit growth space.
6. Useful travel content: useful content that accompanies the traveller’s micro
moments.
Hotels have a love-hate relationship with the OTAs. While a majority of their bookings
come through other channels, OTAs remain crucial to get as close to being fully booked
as possible*.
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4. Risk reduction: Fees are structured in a way that there is no upfront payment and
no payment whatsoever unless there is a booking. Unlike in online marketing, there
is no risk of paying money for advertising for no return. Cost-per-click models that I
have described previously come with the risk of no or low returns.
5. Drive additional tra c to the hotel’s website (“billboard effect”): One prominent
study came to the conclusion that there are is a considerable amount of travellers
who research on the OTAs, like Booking.com, but then book on the respective
hotel’s website. Thus, the OTA pays for the customer acquisition cost (CAC) but
generates no revenue for themselves. This effect is called “billboard effect.” More
recently, other studies have questioned that this effect (still) exists. It is ultimately
hard to measure due to the hundreds of micro moments over which the customer
journey unfolds. But there are two things I am very certain of:
1. Being present on an OTA with good ratings will have positive effects.
2. Bookings will take place where the customer gets additional bene ts (loyalty
bene ts, perks, freebies) – at the same price, be it on the hotel page or on the
OTA pages.
6. Market intelligence: Booking.com shares market intelligence, booking forecasts
for given locations as well as how the hotel is performing on the Booking.com
platform in relation to competition.
* Some of the most important KPIs in the hotel industry are Average Daily Rates (ADR)
and Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR). For the purposes of this article, note that
“fully booked” means maximising these KPIs,
Key Partners
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Key Activities
The biggest difference between traditional business model and the platform business
model are indirect network effects. Key activities have to aim to enhance these. Of
course, Booking.com knows this very well. From their investor presentation, you can see
how they see the positive indirect network effects.
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The master resource of your platform are its network effects which are enabled by the
participants, the content, the data/algorithms, skilled staff and the website/app
infrastructure:
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Choice, content, localisation allow high conversion rates thus enable Booking.com to
auction cost-per-click advertising higher than others and get tra c and bookings
[source: Priceline investor presentation]
The Booking.com webpage key to achieving high conversion rates that allow
auctioning for rank #1 in Google and Bing advertising spots. It is full of persuasive
webelements to close the sale. Click image for full size..
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Customer Segments
In the platform business model, there are two or more sides that should be considered
customers (or partners and customers). Let’s start with ways to segment
accommodation providers:
There are many ways to segment travel customers. Here are a few examples:
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The issue with this is that the data required for the above type segmentation is disbursed
across the multitude of players in the industry (or not known) and will not satisfy the
recommendations of effective segmentation:
All this said you can sense that there is a great opportunity in this space (and some
airlines have built their capabilities in this space very well through their loyalty programs).
Once you have a rich data set, you can segment and micro-segment depending on the
problem you are trying to solve. For traditional advertising and targeting purposes,
segments should be at least 10-15% of your visitors. But for more innovative and
personalised purposes, your micro-segments can be smaller.
Let’s conclude with the reminder that good segmentation is a powerful enabler for
effective revenue management.
Channels
Ad channels:
Related articles
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Google
Facebook
Twitter
Snapchat
Pinterest
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Demand aggregation
Groupon
Yelp
OTAs
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Booking.com
TripAdvisor
Expedia
Biz model comparison
Customer Relationships
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Hotels are unhappy about the amount of commission they have to pay for bookings
through the OTAs
Due to this ambivalence, Booking.com makes it very easy to join their platform
They make sure there is no risk for the hotel (no booking, no fees, no set-up fees at
all, etc)
They give “instant grati cation” to those that join by making them visible globally,
translation to other languages, etc at no cost
Owning the customer relationship is one of the most important things that all platform
businesses have to keep in mind. And when we say that we, most tangibly, mean their
contact data (i.e. email address). This is crucial for the ability of repeat-, up- and cross-
sales.
Hotels would love to have the customers email-address once they book through
Booking.com. This would give them ample opportunity to build a customer relationship,
to cross and up-sell themselves and get ancillary revenue etc. This is one of the reasons
why hotels entice their guests to sign up to their loyalty program.
But it also is an area of trials. As an example, Expedia and Red Lion Hotel have started
collaborating on their loyalty proposition as part of which Expedia shares more
information with Red Lion (most notably the customer’s email address).
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Revenue
1. Agency business model
2. Merchant business model
3. Advertising business model
4. Subscription business model
5. Other (e.g. travel insurance fees, marketing and business analytics services)
Booking.com generates most of its revenue through the agency model where each
reservation incurs a commission (they also generate some ad, merchant and other
revenues but these are a very small percentage). Here are some examples where
Booking.com and the other subsidiaries of the Priceline Group use the above business
models:
Reservation of accommodation, rental cars, etc generate commissions and fall into
the agency business model
Priceline’s Name Your Own Price and package deals fall under the merchant
business model
Their meta search engine Kayak.com earns advertising revenues on a cost per click
pricing model
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OpenTable earns commissions but also subscription services for their reservation
management system (see my article on Yelp for this)
Travel insurance fees which for now I am not going to elaborate further on
Revenues generated by Booking.com’s BookingSuite accommodation marketing
and business analytics services
Priceline believes that travel booking is in a secular shift from o ine to online booking.
On global level online booking accounts for <40%. In the US, online bookings have now
captured over 50% market share. Some analysts expect that it will now taper but that
other countries will catch-up to similar levels. A case might be made that where there is
no strong tradition of o ine travel agencies, the online space may capture an even large
share.
From their annual report, you can see that the majority of Priceline’s revenues come from
Booking.com using the agency business model:
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Cost Structure
Let’s look at Priceline’s annual report to understand their operational cost structure. Note,
that they don’t split out Booking.com’s costs separately. Hence, we have to take things at
an aggregate level. With Booking.com being the largest entity, we still get a good feel for
the numbers.
Operating expenses
Priceline’s operating expenses from their annual report (pg 71):
Performance advertising: $3.4b
Brand advertising: $0.29b
Sales and marketing: $0.43b
Personnel, including stock-based compensation of $0.24b, respectively $1.3b
General and administrative: $0.45b
Information technology: $0.14b
Depreciation and amortization: $0.3b
Capitalised costs
Priceline’s capital expenses from their annual report (pg 71)
We are not interested in all their capital costs (capex). But let’s have a quick look at capex
in relation to their website/app development shows overall capitalised costs of $54.2m.
In the balance sheet, direct website/app assets are recorded as property & equipment.
Priceline Acquisitions
You may be surprised about the low operational expenses to Priceline’s website/app
development capex given their portfolio of brands (and in relation to the assets listed).
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To get the complete picture on this you need to look at their major acquisitions of travel-
related platforms.
[13]
1 2004 Major stakes in Travelweb and Active Hotels
[14]
2 2005 Booking.com
[15]
3 2007 Agoda.com
[16]
4 2010 TravelJigsaw / Rentalcars.com
[17]
5 2013 Kayak.com $1.8 billion
[18]
6 2014 OpenTable* $2.6 billion
[19]
7 2014 MBuuteeq and Hotel Ninjas $98 Million
[20]
8 2015 Rocketmiles
[21]
9 2017 Momondo and Cheap ights $550 million
[22]
10 2017 Mundi
* In their annual report 2016, Priceline accounted for impairment to goodwill in relation to
OpenTable of 94om.
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Network effects
Platform business models have indirect network effects at their core. Here is how
Priceline describes these for their own business.
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And here is nally the summary Business Model Canvas for Booking.com.
Business Model Canvas for Booking.com (download as a pdf from free download
area)
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Article by Dr Murat Uenlue / Business Model Canvas, Online Travel Agency (OTA), PBM in-depth examples, Platform business model /
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