Travel

Travel Channel Corporate Office

The Travel Channel was launched on February 1, 1987; it was founded by TWA Marketing Services (a subsidiary of Trans World Airlines), most likely to boost airline sales.

The Discovery Channel (Discovery Communications) acquired a 70% ownership stake in the channel in 1997 and subsequently acquired the remaining 30% interest in 1999.

Available data shows that viewership peaked in Spring 2008 at 27.78 million views per 7 days, and has been in decline ever since. As of Spring 2017, the channel got 17.25 million views.

On October 1, 2018, Travel Channel revealed a new logo stylized as Trvl Channel and shifted a majority of its programming to “the paranormal, the unsolved, the creepy and terrifying”, akin to its counterpart Destination America when they drifted to paranormal programming themselves full-time in mid-2017.

Programming includes Vampires in America and Alien Abduction.

The Travel Channel remains a part of the Discovery Channel family. It maintains a corporate office in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Viator Corporate Office

Rod Cuthbert founded Viator in 1995 after realizing that there was a huge market of online travelers searching for great deals on travel, tours, and vacation sites.

Cuthbert remained CEO of the company until 2014 when he sold it to TripAdvisor for $200 million, mostly in cash.

The company specializes in tours and attractions in countries around the world. Clients can book tours such as the Harry Potter Tour at Warner Brothers Studios in London to a nighttime helicopter flight around Las Vegas, or hit up the Luau at Paradise Cove, Hawaii.

Viator offers a full-refund policy for any venue as long as it is canceled within 24 hours of the date of the program.

In December 2021, Viator ran into some major competition when Expedia partnered with GetYourGuide.

Viator maintains a corporate office in San Francisco, California.

HRS The Hotel Portal Corporate Office

In 1972 Robert Ragge opened a travel agency in a former greengrocer’s shop in Cologne, Germany, which specialized in arranging hotel rooms during trade fairs.

In 1986, HRS published an international hotel directory with fixed prices. In addition, a computer-aided reservation system was introduced in the 1980s, which formed the basis for the presence in the on-screen text.

After 1989, HRS was the first provider to make electronic bookings possible. Customers were presented with a list of free hotel rooms that could previously only be accessed by telephone. In 1995 the company started the first online portal for hotel bookings in what was the new medium, called the Internet. This meant a significant boost for the business and faxes and phone orders were slowly discontinued.

Today, HRS is a global company with offices in New York, New York, and Dallas, Texas.

The company earns revenue via bookings. Booking via HRS is free of charge for travelers, but hoteliers pay a standard commission of 15%.

The company also offers more than 500,000-holiday homes and apartments. A special feature of the platform is that there is no need to inquire about availability from the providers, as all accommodations can be booked directly by travelers.

HRS is one of the market leaders in this area. Major customers are, for example, Google, Siemens, and Toyota.

In May 2021, the German high court stated that Bookings.Com and HRS must remove slogans such as “best price” or “lowest price” when booking rooms in Germany.

HRS maintains a corporate office in the United States in Plano, Texas.

AirFareWatchdog.Com Corporate Office

George Hobica founded Smarter Travel Media in 1998. The company operates as an online travel agency, designed to find low priced air fares, hotels, and vacation packages.

The company operates under several different names including Airfarewatchdog, BookingBuddy, Family Vacation Critic, Holiday Watchdog, OneTime, Oyster, SmarterTravel, and WhatToPack.

Airfarewatchdog conducted a survey in June 2016 which found that the majority of travelers felt that airlines overcharged for tickets and baggage fees.

Due to the coronavirus crisis, vacation trips and flights have dramatically dropped in price. Tracy Stewart, the content editor for Airfarewatchdog, says that to be on the safe side and prevent canceled flights, as of January 2021, it’s best to book flights at least 3-4 months out if possible.

AirFareWatchDog maintains a corporate office in Boston, Massachusetts.

Away Luggage Corporate Office

Former colleagues Jennifer Rubio and Stephanie Korey, who had worked on the executive team at Warby Parker, founded Away in 2015. The pair wanted to create luggage that was easier, especially for women, that had everything frequent travelers would appreciate, such as USB ports.

The company grew quickly, selling more than $12 million in luggage in 2016, its first full fiscal year. The following year, with more than $50 million in sales, the company had to hire an additional 60 persons to handle the load.

To date, the company has sold more than 300,000 suitcases and is the highest funded, all-female start-up projects. The majority of sales occur online, but the company does have 4 brick and mortar locations in the US, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin. The company recently opened a store in London as the company’s flagship store in the UK.

The carry on bag is the company’s most sought after piece, with celebrities posting photos of their bags on Instagram and the popular app SnapChat.

Online site The Verge posted an interview in December 2019 with Stephanie Korey, where she described her own workplace as being “toxic” and where employees were publically ridiculed on Stack. Korey apologized several times calling her words “simply wrong”, but the outcry was so strong, Korey resigned as CEO in late December 2019.

The corporate office for Away is located in New York, New York.