STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 29, 1999--
Priceline.com's travel service sells 5,000 airline tickets
in a single day
Service passes 25,000 leisure airline tickets sold in seven-day period
Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN), the patented e-commerce system
where consumers name their own price for leisure airline tickets,
hotel rooms, new cars and home mortgages, today announced that its
travel services unit had achieved three sales records.
- On Wednesday, April 28, priceline.com's travel services unit
recorded its first million-dollar sales day for leisure airline
tickets.
- Also on Wednesday, priceline.com sold a record 5,000-plus tickets
in a single 24-hour period, or approximately one ticket sold
every 17 seconds. The company's previous one-day record of 4,300
tickets was set last week, on April 19.
- For the first time, priceline.com's travel services unit sold
over 25,000 airline tickets in a single seven-day period. By
comparison, priceline.com sold 330,000 tickets in its first year
of operations, for a 12-month average of 6,200 tickets per week.
Earlier this week, priceline.com announced key customer metrics
for its other business units. Overall, more than 1 million unique
consumers have used the priceline.com service to try and save money by
making guaranteed purchase offers for a variety of goods and services.
The service is now averaging over 300,000 new unique customers a
quarter using one or more of priceline.com's services.
Priceline.com's hotel room service, which lets consumers save
money by naming their own price for empty hotel rooms, has sold over
75,000 rooms since the service launched in late October 1998, and now
sells an average of over 5,000 rooms a week. Last week, the hotel
service was expanded to cover over 1,100 cities, town and resorts in
all 50 states. 4,250 quality, brand-name hotels have signed up to
offer unsold rooms through priceline.com. Unlike hotel services on the
Internet that focus primarily on major cities, priceline.com offers
rooms in every major city as well as hundreds of smaller to
medium-size cities and towns.
Priceline.com's home financing service, launched in January 1999,
lets consumers name their interest rate and terms for a home mortgage,
refinancing or a home equity loan. In the last 90 days, priceline.com
has received over 10,000 mortgage requests and has helped consumers
obtain more than $125 million in approved requests for home financing.
Unlike other Internet finance services where lenders tell consumers
what rates are available to them, priceline.com enables its customers
to save money by using priceline.com to tell lenders the exact
interest rate and points they want to pay and let priceline.com find a
lender willing to agree to those terms.
Priceline.com's new car service, which is being offered on a
cash-sales-only test basis in the New York metro area, has sold over
$11 million worth of new cars since the beta test began in the summer
of 1998. Unlike other Internet car-buying services that generate leads
for dealerships, and then have salesmen follow up to negotiate a price
directly with the buyer, priceline.com lets the buyer save money by
naming his or her own price for the exact car they want. Priceline.com
never gives the buyer's name to a car dealer until after the dealer
agrees in writing to sell the car at the buyer's price. With
priceline.com's auto service, the buyer never has to spend time and
energy negotiating with a car salesman. The entire priceline.com car
buying process is completely haggle-free.
Priceline.com's "open system" works with all factory-authorized
dealerships in a market, not just a select few. The service is
available only in the New York metro area, and priceline.com is
currently testing various methods of on-site auto financing prior to
its intended national auto service roll out by the end of this year.
More consumers than ever before are saving money by purchasing
goods and services through priceline.com at the prices they want to
pay. For example, 18 major domestic and international airlines are
currently participating in priceline.com's airline service, compared
to five when the service launched in April 1998. As a result, the
company's airline service is now able to fill an average 35 percent of
all reasonable offers for leisure airline tickets on domestic flights
on the first try - up from 24 percent just two months ago.
On some popular routes, such as New York to San Francisco or Los
Angeles to London, priceline.com fills up to 73 percent of all
reasonable offers on the first try. Priceline.com considers an offer
for an airline ticket to be reasonable when it is no more than 30
percent below the lowest generally available advance-purchase fare for
the same route.
All of priceline.com's services are easy to use and deliver a yes
or no response quickly. There is never a charge to make a purchase
request through the service. Consumers can reach priceline.com through
its Web site (www.priceline.com). For airline tickets and hotel rooms,
priceline.com also has a toll-free 1-800-PRICELINE number for making
purchase requests. Consumers simply name the price they want to pay
for an airline ticket, hotel room, new car or loan. Priceline.com
takes the offer and presents it to participating sellers, who can fill
as much of that demand as they want at the price and savings
determined by the buyers.
This press release may contain forward-looking statements which
are made pursuant to the safe-harbor provisions of the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Expressions of future goals
and similar expressions including, without limitation, "may," "will,"
"believes," "should," "could," "hope," "expects," "expected," "does
not currently expect," "anticipates," "predicts," "potential," and
"forecast," reflecting something other than historical fact are
intended to identify forward-looking statements, but are not the
exclusive means of identifying such statements. These forward-looking
statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including the
timely development and market acceptance of products and technologies
and other factors described in the Company's filing with the
Securities and Exchange Commission. The actual results may differ
materially from any forward-looking statements due to such risks and
uncertainties. The Company undertakes no obligations to revise or
update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or
circumstances that may arise after the date of this release.
--30--flb/ny*
CONTACT: priceline.com, Stamford
Brian Ek, 203/705-3026
brian.ek@priceline.com
or
Mike Darcy, 203/705-3331
mike.darcy@priceline.com
or
Connors Communications, New York
Jennifer Carr, 212/807-7500
jcarr@connors.com |
