HolidayCheck

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HolidayCheck AG

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 2003
Seat Bottighofen , Switzerland
management
  • Christoph Ludmann
    ( CEO )
Number of employees circa 383
sales 2016: 107.3 million euros
Branch Tourism
Website www.holidaycheck.ch

The HolidayCheck AG is based in Bottighofen TG ( Switzerland ) is the operator of travel booking and hotel review sites on the Internet. The main business model is the commission-based brokerage of package tours, hotels and rental cars as well as the forwarding of Internet users to other booking portals. The company is rooted in an online hotel review platform. Integrated into the booking portal, it is the largest German-speaking hotel review portal and offers information and an exchange of views on travel and vacation. The company, founded in 2003, has been part of HolidayCheck Group AG since 2006 ( company until mid-2016: Tomorrow Focus AG ).

development

founding

The internet portal was founded in 1999 by students from Konstanz who wanted to know before their vacation whether their hotel was worth the price. Initially, the site was operated privately under the domain Hotelbewertungen.de . In the summer of 2003, the television station RTL reported on the portal, which helped achieve the breakthrough and encouraged the company to be founded. The entry in the commercial register took place on November 11, 2003. The founders include Markus Schott, Hakan Öktem, Jens Freiter, Jörg Kampshoff and Sascha Vasic.

Ownership structure

In July 2006, Hubert Burda Media Holding took over 80% of the shares in HolidayCheck AG ( Tomorrow Focus 51%, Burda Digital Ventures 29%) for a purchase price of more than 60 million euros through the subsidiaries Burda Digital Ventures and Tomorrow Focus AG . Burda Digital Ventures sold its shares to Tomorrow Focus AG in 2007 . At that time, HolidayCheck was already the market leader of German-speaking hotel and travel review portals, which had just taken over the competitor Hotelcheck.de . In 2008 HolidayCheck also acquired the Urlaub.com portal .

In January 2009, Tomorrow Focus AG bought a further 14% of the travel portal through its subsidiary TF-Beteiligungs GmbH for 21.6 million euros and thus held 94% of the shares. Initially, the company founders retained a 6% stake, but then sold them in June 2013. Tomorrow Focus AG thus became the sole owner. Hubert Burda Media is currently the main shareholder of HolidayCheck Group AG (as of September 2017).

Management, employees and locations

Following on from Hakan Öktem (until 2009), Jörg Trouvain (2009 to 2012), Gilles Despas (2012 to 2015) and Anja Keckeisen (2015 to 2017), Christoph Ludmann took over the management in mid-2017.

The number of employees was around 35 in mid-2007; in June 2017, according to company information, it was around 383 at the Bottighofen, Munich ( HolidayCheck Solutions GmbH ), Poznan and Warsaw locations .

Review portal and online travel agency

At HolidayCheck , holidaymakers can choose, compare, book and then rate the offers from over 100 tour operators. The possibility of rating has created a large community of holidaymakers . According to the company, almost 2.5 million members exchange and support each other in the travel forum; more than 8 million evaluations have been made so far (as of June 2017).

In addition to the review portal , HolidayCheck has also operated an online travel agency on the site since 2004 . Around 170 employees are involved in the tasks of the online travel agency (as of June 2017). Since the beginning of 2017, the company has also published the online travel magazine Away .

Since July 25, 2005, the website has had a s @ fer shopping certificate from TÜV Süd for secure online shopping in the areas of data protection , secure data transfer and usability.

Holidaycheck.de records 22.5 million visits per month ; the number of monthly page impressions is 239.9 million ( IVW 2017-07).

The parent company HolidayCheck Group AG (formerly Tomorrow Focus AG ) has been concentrating on the travel sector since 2015. The publishing area (including Focus Online , Huffington Post ) was sold, as was the subscription area (including ElitePartner ). This strategic orientation found its expression in a change of name in mid-2016: Tomorrow Focus AG became HolidayCheck Group AG .

Memberships

The company was a founding member of the New Tourism Association (VNT), an interest group of independent travel agents to promote new sales channels . From there, in January 2008, he moved to the Association of Internet Travel Sales (VIR), the association of the largest commercial travel sellers on the Internet (including Expedia , Opodo, etc.).

Perceptions

Tests and awards

Stiftung Warentest examined hotel reviews on the Internet in 2007. Only HolidayCheck and hotel reviews recognized intended manipulation. Of eight platforms, the testers only considered holidaycheck.de to be useful. In 2010, holidaycheck.de once again performed best out of seven websites examined. In 2012, HolidayCheck took the best place in a test of online hotel bookings. At the beginning of 2017, HolidayCheck was again the test winner in a study by Stiftung Warentest.

Trade and consumer magazines also checked the offers.

  • The travel magazine Clever Reisen! named the platform the test winner at the beginning of 2012.
  • In 2015 , holidaycheck.de also finished a test by Computer Bild as the test winner.
  • According to Test Bild magazine , the platform is the test winner in the online travel provider category.
  • In the “Deutschland Test” ( Focus Money ) ranking, holidaycheck.de came off as a customer favorite in the travel portal category.
  • A study by ServiceValue in cooperation with the Handelsblatt recorded HolidayCheck in April 2017 as the best online retailer of in the field of travel agencies.
  • In May 2017, the German Institute for Service Quality named HolidayCheck the best online portal in the package tour category .

For its part, HolidayCheck has been presenting the HolidayCheck Award annually since 2005 , which is based on holidaymakers' reviews and is recognized in the hotel industry .

Criticism and filtering of manipulated reviews

As HolidayCheck is one of the largest commercial travel agents with extensive online offers and its own travel agency call center, there was suspicion that reviews were being manipulated there. While hoteliers or commissioned agencies could “write up” individual properties, manipulative criticism could flow in from competitors (or on their behalf). There have also been incidents in which hoteliers were blackmailed by guests with threatened negative reviews .

In order to ward off these dangers, the ratings are automatically checked. With the help of filters, the company scans every received evaluation for catalog language, insults and other conspicuous formulations. Any suspicious evaluations identified are then manually viewed by a team of 45 people. In 2012, Stiftung Warentest checked various hotel agency portals using fake hotel reviews. HolidayCheck achieved the best result by identifying false reports (four out of five).

The portal operators see added value for the hoteliers in the reviews, since positive reviews are free advertising for the hotel and negative reviews could give hoteliers feedback and suggestions for improving their services.

Lawsuit for damage to reputation and dismissal by the BGH

From 2008 to 2015, a Berlin hotelier and HolidayCheck disputed whether an allegedly reputation-damaging rating should be removed. The deletion request of the hoteliers was the portal to true, however, refused a criminal penalty declaration of failure to deliver. The legal disputes stretched across several instances and occupied courts in Berlin , Hamburg and Cologne . On March 19, 2015, the Federal Court of Justice dismissed the Berlin hotelier's action in the final instance. Operators of such comparison portals are not obliged to thoroughly check the content of the reviews in advance. That is not reasonable. The operator is only liable for bad reviews if he becomes aware of a clear violation of the law and does nothing.

attachment

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry by HolidayCheck AG  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the commercial register of the Canton of Thurgau , accessed on July 23, 2016.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / tg.powernet.ch  
  2. ↑ a b Andreas Molitor: No experiments! . In: brand eins 4/2016, accessed on July 23, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b Change at the top of Holidaycheck , Allgemeine Hotel- und Gastronomie-Zeitung (AHGZ), May 10, 2017, accessed on August 20, 2017.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g HolidayCheck factsheet , status: June 2017 ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on August 29, 2017. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / newsroom.holidaycheck.de
  5. ↑ Key figures according to Onvista , accessed on February 3, 2018.
  6. ↑ Annual Report of HolidayCheck Group AG, p. 59 on HolidayCheck AG, online , accessed on January 22, 2020
  7. ↑ Hans-Peter Siebenhaar: The market leadership? A question of honour! In: Handelsblatt , February 13, 2012; Gilles Despas takes over the executive chair at Holidaycheck . In: Handelsblatt , May 15, 2012; Harald Czycholl: The sneaky game on the rating portals . In: Die Welt , July 28, 2014, accessed on July 23, 2016.
  8. ↑ a b Holidaycheck docks at Burda . In: FVW international. The magazine for tourism and business travel , July 21, 2006.
  9. ↑ a b c Tim Holzapfel: The WG-AG . In: fvw. Magazine for Tourism & Business Travel , May 18, 2007.
  10. ↑ 10 years HolidayCheck ( Memento from March 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: tomorrow-focus.de , November 7, 2013.
  11. ↑ From the living room to the first division . In: Update. Magazine for executives in the Austrian travel market , December 2007, p. 10, accessed on September 26, 2016.
  12. ↑ Michael Kläsgen: "The timing has to be right". In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . May 28, 2018, accessed June 4, 2018 .
  13. ↑ Tomorrow Focus lijft HolidayCheck in full. July 1, 2013, accessed on June 4, 2018 (Dutch).
  14. ↑ Uwe Wolf: Holidaycheck.de Urlaubretter on the Internet ( Memento of the original from September 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: digital life. The world of tomorrow . Focus Spezial , January 2008, p. 65, accessed on September 26, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.medialine.de
  15. ↑ Nils Jacobsen: HolidayCheck: The true value of ToFo. November 24, 2008. Retrieved July 25, 2016 .
  16. ↑ M&A Review , 10/2007, p. 483.
  17. ↑ Timo Teggatz: Offensive newcomer . In: fvw. Magazine for Tourism & Business Travel , June 22, 2007.
  18. ↑ Holidaycheck swallows hotelcheck . In: fvw. Magazine for Tourism & Business Travel , July 20, 2007.
  19. ↑ Holidaycheck is on vacation . In: fvw. Magazine for Tourism & Business Travel , May 9, 2008.
  20. ↑ Tomorrow Focus AG takes over another 14 percent of HolidayCheck AG ( memento of March 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: tomorrow-focus.de , February 12, 2009.
  21. ↑ Tomorrow Focus AG takes over outstanding minority shares in HolidayCheck AG ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  22. ↑ See the information on the company on the company website, accessed on September 26, 2017.
  23. ↑ For Hakan Öktem see Timo Teggatz: Grenzgänger . In: fvw. Magazine for Tourism & Business Travel , December 19, 2007.
  24. ↑ Trouvain replaces Öktem as CEO at HolidayCheck. In: kress.de . December 5, 2008, accessed July 25, 2016 . ; Arndt Aschenbeck: Jörg the builder . In: fvw. Magazine for Tourism & Business Travel , January 8, 2010.
  25. ↑ Gilles Despas takes over the executive chair at Holidaycheck , Handelsblatt from May 15, 2012.
  26. ↑ For Anja Keckeisen, see CEO in three steps . In: fvw. Magazine for Tourism & Business Travel , July 3, 2015.
  27. ↑ Until July 2016: Tomorrow Travel Solutions GmbH .
  28. ↑ See the information on the company's website , accessed September 26, 2017.
  29. ↑ Holidaycheck starts travel magazine . In: fvw. Magazine for Touristik & Business Travel , January 6, 2017. Travel magazine from Holidaycheck . In: BZ , January 29, 2017.
  30. ↑ Certificate number: 1223025329/1, HolidayCheck AG. July 11, 2016. Retrieved July 25, 2016 .
  31. ↑ Media data. Retrieved August 29, 2017 .
  32. ↑ Tomorrow Focus sells publishing business . In: Horizont , March 26, 2015. Tomorrow Focus AG sells ElitePartner to Oakley Capital. In: Focus Money online. June 8, 2015, accessed July 26, 2016 .
  33. ↑ Tomorrow Focus becomes Holidaycheck . In: Börsen-Zeitung , May 6, 2016.
  34. ↑ HolidayCheck joins the VIR . In: presseanzeiger.de , January 15, 2008, accessed on August 3, 2016.
  35. ↑ VIR full members. Retrieved July 25, 2016 .
  36. ↑ Hotel rating on the Internet: The best portals. In: test 2/2007. January 18, 2007, accessed July 25, 2016 .
  37. ↑ "Test": Hotel reviews on the Internet are mostly unusable . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , February 17, 2007.
  38. ↑ Hotel rating: The best portals on the net. In: test 2/2010. January 28, 2010, accessed July 25, 2016 .
  39. ↑ Hotel booking: sea view at the click of a mouse. In: test 5/2012. May 11, 2012. Retrieved July 25, 2016 . Comparison of the Stiftung Warentest: Large hotel portals perform best. In: Spiegel Online . April 26, 2012. Retrieved July 25, 2016 .
  40. ↑ Holidays for connoisseurs , test 1/2017, pp. 70–76.
  41. ↑ TEST. Hotel rating on the internet. In: Clever Reisen !, 1/2012. Retrieved July 25, 2016 .
  42. ↑ Jan Bruns: Summer vacation 2015: Online travel portals in the test. In: Computer Bild. June 12, 2014, accessed July 25, 2016 .
  43. ↑ Jan Bruns: 10 online travel providers in the test . In: Test Bild 1/2016, pp. 30–37.
  44. ↑ Germany's customer lovers. (No longer available online.) In: Germany Test. 2016, archived from the original on August 3, 2016 ; Retrieved July 25, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.deutschlandtest.de
  45. ↑ ServiceValue GmbH: Study report "Germany's best dealers". Stationary and online. Study design, results and rankings. A study in cooperation with Handelsblatt . Cologne, April 2017. Accessed August 29, 2017.
  46. ↑ Award winners. These are Germany's best online portals. In: n-tv (online). May 23, 2017. Retrieved August 29, 2017 . Germany's best online portals: Category Portals Package Travel. In: disq.de. May 23, 2017. Retrieved August 29, 2017 .
  47. ↑ See for example joy in Sobernheim: "HolidayCheck Award" for BollAnts in the park. In: Rhein-Zeitung . January 15, 2015, accessed July 25, 2016 . Magic Life really big at the Holidaycheck Award . In: TAI Tourismuswirtschaft Austria & International , No. 2035/11 of January 14, 2011; Three HolidayCheck Awards for Aldiana . In: TAI Tourismuswirtschaft Austria & International , No. 2190–2191 / 2014 of January 10, 2014. In the pool with celebrities. In: Berchtesgadener Anzeiger . February 12, 2016. Retrieved July 25, 2016 .
  48. ↑ On this problem, see for example Jacob Schlandt: The world of virtual miracles . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , January 22, 2011; Markus Bruges: Blasphemy undesirable. In: The time . January 15, 2009, accessed July 25, 2016 .
  49. ↑ Thomas Thieme: Bad evaluation as a threat. In: Stuttgarter Zeitung . June 21, 2013. Retrieved July 25, 2016 .
  50. ↑ Michael Werner: The insider tip will not go away . Stuttgarter Zeitung , April 29, 2017.
  51. ↑ HolidayCheck is the winner at Stiftung Warentest. In: focus.de. April 26, 2012. Retrieved July 25, 2016 .
  52. ↑ See Markus Brügge: Blasphemy undesirable. In: The time . January 15, 2009, accessed July 25, 2016 . Meike Lorenzen: Online review portals: Why Tripadvisor and Holidaycheck are so popular. In: Wirtschaftswoche . January 31, 2014, accessed July 26, 2016 . Hotel rating about everything? Yes and no. But importance is high. In: TAI Tourismuswirtschaft Austria & International , No. 2202/2014, March 28, 2014. Online reviews for hotels are extremely important. In: Rhein-Zeitung (online). December 7, 2014, accessed July 26, 2016 . See also the recommendations of the Austrian Hotel Association : Reputation Management. Generate, analyze, react correctly and multiply ( memento of the original from April 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF), May 2015, accessed on July 26, 2016.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.oehv.at
  53. ↑ For this dispute see the fight of the hotel rating . In: fvw. Magazine for Touristik & Business Travel , August 7, 2008. No deletion of A - & - O rating . In: fvw. Magazine for Touristik & Business Travel , April 13, 2012. HolidayCheck: Hostel fails with complaint against bad reviews on the Internet. In: Spiegel Online. March 20, 2015, accessed July 25, 2016 . Press office of the Federal Court of Justice: Federal Court of Justice on the liability of a hotel review portal for untrue factual assertions by a user. April 19, 2015, accessed July 25, 2016 . Also judgment of the BGH, AZ IZR 94/13. Federal Court of Justice, March 19, 2015, accessed on August 4, 2016 . See also judgment of the OLG Hamburg: No deletion of reviews at the mere request of the hotelier. In: tophotel.de. August 3, 2016. Retrieved August 4, 2016 .