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Boo.com to be relaunched as a travel,
social networking website
Web Reservations International (WRI)
will relaunch Boo.com as a travel site
that will allow users to book hotels
directly.
4 May, 2007
The legendary fashion internet
company Boo.com has got a new life as
a website dedicated to travel and
social networking.
Web Reservations International (WRI),
which is based in Dublin and operates
the budget travel search sites
hostelworld.com and trav.com, has
bought the domain name Boo.com for a
new website.
The new website, WRI claims, will
create a unique online experience by
enabling users to read reviews, then
book directly with the hotel they
choose.
According to Ray Nolan, founder and
chief executive of WRI, Boo’s
association with a company that lost
£80 million in 18 months had not put
him off. Declares he: “We love the
name. It is short and catchy and
memorable and it works across all
languages.”
The new website will list all hotels
free and it hopes to earn money
through commission on bookings taken
directly through the website and will
also earn pay-per-click revenue from
clicks on to hotel websites. There
will be advertisements and the prices
will change depending on the season.
Users will also be able to share
recommendations with friends by
posting pictures of their holiday
experiences.
Initially being launched in English,
Boo.com will eventually be available
in 24 languages.
Web Reservations International,
founded in 1999, has offices in
Shanghai in China, San Mateo in
California, and Sydney in Australia.
It claims to have created profitable
websites since its inception. It
processes, across its sites, around
70,000 bed-nights a day and handles
over euros 300 million in bookings
each year. Its earnings for 2006
amounted to euros 19 million.
The original Boo.com, the brainchild
of Ernst Malmsten, a poetry critic,
and Kajsa Leander, a former Vogue
model, who had been at nursery school
together in Sweden, epitomised the
enthusiasm of the dotcom era. Boo.com
was declared as one of Europe’s best
companies before it had even sold a
single item.
After the sale of their first venture,
an online bookstore, Ernst Malmsten
and Kajsa Leander, then in their
twenties, decided to go into business.
Their next project was to create a
website for the most fashionable
people to buy their clothes.
Boo.com was born in London in 1998, a
time when anything related to dotcom
was hugely fascinating.
Ernst Malmsten and Kajsa Leander had
initially expected the business to
require £20 million in investment, 30
employees and three months to
establish. But, by its launch in
October 1999, it was employing 400
people in eight offices and had
gobbled up around £80 million.
Sadly, the company lacked the
necessary infrastructure to succeed
and it lost $1 million a week and
collapsed by May 2000.
Malmsten wrote a book about the whole
experience, appropriately titled Boo
Hoo.
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