Love it or hate it - the Priceline Group, many would argue, has made very few wrong turns over the years.
The company's strategy around the Booking.com acquisition and growth plan, for example, is considered to be one of the best by any online travel brand in the industry's history.
Moving into metasearch through the $1.8 billion acquisition of Kayak in 2012 now seems to have made perfect sense for the overall, corporate portfolio.
It was a decision which has since reshaped how online travel agency intermediaries think of the purchase ecosystem (Expedia followed suit with the $632 million Trivago investment in December 2012).
Since then, a string of acquisitions have shown how the group is looking to expand into other areas, such as restaurant bookings (the OpenTable deal for $2.8 billion in June 2014) and industry-facing services through the creation of the BookingSuite division (by way of the Buuteeq, Hotel Ninjas and recent PriceMatch deals).
Shareholders and the financial markets are probably rather happy, too, with the company's stock currently hovering around six times higher than it was five years ago and trading on a market cap of some $63 billion.
So that's that - a corporate entity that many in the industry respect for its determination and business prowess (unless you're a rate parity campaigner, of course).
Missed opportunities
There was a intriguing segment during an appearance by Glenn Fogel at the Phocuswright Europe conference in Dublin last week.
The Priceline Group's head of worldwide strategy and planning and executive vice president for corporate development might have a business card-busting job title but, in short, he is Priceline's big cheese when it comes to mergers and acquisitions.
Fogel was asked if he could identify companies or trends that his employer may have missed.
His answer was revealing, both for its honesty and because it is interesting to ponder what may have been.
First of all, Fogel highlights the proliferation of taxi and ground transportation apps that arrived on the scene in the past few years.
"We didn't see the importance of that coming."
And then, inevitably, comes the deluge of sharing economy-type services - singling out specifically the giant of them all, Airbnb.
"If someone had brought that pitch to me, I would say I wouldn't know about that [model]."
He then went to to highlight how it would have been the negatives associated with Airbnb that may have concerned him more (regulation, security, regulations) rather than the opportunity.
"That was $20 billion [we got] wrong."
Those who currently bemoan the size and power of the Priceline Group should, perhaps, now be rather grateful that Fogel and crew did miss out on these two massive movements in the industry.
NB:Grab money image via Shutterstock.