Abstract
The e-business company that I am going to present is Lastminute.com. Lastminute.com is part of Travelocity group, and is an on-line agency specialized in organizing cheap trips, holiday promotion, but also last minute trips. It was created under the status of a joint stock company with a capital of € 15,688,215. Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox founded Lastminute.com in 1998. The first idea of the website was to sell tickets at the last minute on the Internet for entertainment halls in London. The idea was to avoid empty seats in theaters or other entertainment places, by selling tickets at a cheaper price at the last minute. For the vendors it was better to sell at a cheaper price than not to sell at all. The success was very quick!
Its success was driven by the rising number of Internet users, by the low cost of operating such a service, and for the customers by the ability to buy at a cheaper price. Its success was also driven by being the first to offer such service, having a very recognizable name, and targeting early adopters of e-commerce. Today it is the largest online company for travel and leisure in Europe. It operates directly in 14 European countries and has won more than 7 million customers. Its turnover is around 948 million Euros. Lastminute.com offers a wide range of travel, flights, reservations in hotels and leisure (spas, gourmet dinner, parachuting). This wide offering allows lastminute.com to differentiate itself from the competition. In 2006 lastminute.com was elected for the second time, best online travel agency for the quality of its customer relations and in 2008 "Best Customer Service" in the Travel Agency Online category.
