Opodo
UK-based online travel agency
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Opodo is a Spanish-owned online travel agency. It is a pan-European enterprise, founded by a consortium of European airlines, including British Airways, Air France, Alitalia, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, Austrian Airlines and Finnair. The travel technology provider Amadeus owned 99.4% of the company until 2011, when it was taken over by eDreams ODIGEO.[1]
 | |
| Founded | 2001 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Madrid, Spain |
| Area served | Europe |
| Industry | Travel |
| Products | Charter and scheduled passenger airlines, package holidays, hotels and resorts |
| Services | Travel agency |
| Parent | eDreams ODIGEO |
| URL | www |
Opodo operates out of fourteen European countries with headquarters in Madrid. It operates Opodo-branded sites in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Poland and Switzerland, as well as Travellink-branded sites in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. It also operates several other French travel websites.
History
Opodo was designed and developed by Sapient in London in 2000.[citation needed] It launched its first site in Germany in November 2001, its UK site in January 2002, its French site in April 2002 and its Italian site in January 2006.[citation needed] Giovanni Bisignani, former CEO of Alitalia and present[when?] CEO of IATA (International Air Transport Association) was Opodo's first CEO.[citation needed] Nicolas De Santis former CMO of web currency beenz.com and president of strategy consultancy and incubator CorporateVision.io was Opodo's first director of marketing, sales and strategy.[citation needed] In 2002, David P. Scowsill was appointed as Opodo's CEO, replacing interim CEO Simon Tucker.[2][3]
Prior to the founding of Opodo, Orbitz was negotiating with European air carriers, trying to get a deal with them, but the airlines were hesitant to work with a company majority-owned by US carriers.[4]
In 2004, Opodo was bought by Amadeus for 62 million euros.[5]
Since 2011, Opodo has been part of the largest online travel company in Europe, eDreams ODIGEO.[6][7]
Products and services
Opodo Prime
Opodo Prime was launched in 2017, and Metro dubbed it the ‘Netflix of travel’ due to its subscription-based pricing model.[8] It offers additional discounts on all flights and accommodation options.[8] The discounts can be used for up to 9 people on the same booking, across flights and hotels.[9]
Opodo Prime hotels
Opodo launched Prime hotels as part of its Prime subscription service in June 2020.[10] For the same yearly subscription fee, 2.1 million accommodation options with up to 50% off were added to Opodo Prime.[11]
Flight price index dashboard
In June 2020, Opodo unveiled its flight price index dashboard for the UK market.[12]
The service compares current flight prices with prices of the previous year, to suggest the optimum time to book flights.[13] The dashboard uses over 14 billion data touch points from 660 airlines to generate year-on-year price comparisons.[14]
Criticism
Poor customer service
The UK consumer association "Which?" recommends members not to use Opodo.[15] The majority of customer complaints focus on a serious lack of responsiveness from the Opodo customer care team, for instance not receiving a reply to an email in over a month, for them being "unreachable by phone," as well as many instances in which tickets booked and confirmed through Opodo are never actually reserved with the airline.[16] In 2020 The Observer gave Opodo an award for the year's "worst customer service" after it began charging customers £16.49 to receive confirmation emails, "speedy" refunds and "free customer service".[17]