Hidden history of Booking.com will be filmed
For the development of the drama series Hollands Licht, which is part of Warner Bros. International Television Production, will collaborate with the authors of the book: Stijn Bronzwaer (tech journalist), Merijn Rengers (investigative journalist) and Joris Kooiman (financial journalist). All three work as editors at major Dutch NRC newspaper.
Stijn Bronzwaer: "The story of Booking is an essential piece of Dutch internet history. It is a fascinating story that makes people both proud and angry and is full of colourful and fascinating protagonists. It has all the ingredients for a great series. We are honoured that our book is being filmed and that we can work together with Hollands Licht."
Mark Furstner (producer Hollands Licht): "It is a great opportunity to make this series about a seemingly un-Dutch company that just kept growing in a typically Dutch effective and sometimes blunt way. The history of Booking.com begins like a dream from a boys' book and ends with a terrifyingly powerful machine, and is thus the symbol of a period that takes us from the birth of the internet to the way in which our lives are now intertwined with it."
More about the book
Booking.com, one of the richest and most successful internet companies in Europe, has been a mystery for twenty-five years. Everyone knows the website, but no one knows the people and the stories behind this deeply Dutch company in U.S. hands. Until now. Three journalists from the major Dutch NRC newspaper present a detailed reconstruction of the dark internet fairy tale of Booking.com, from an idea built by a group of engineering students in Twente in the late 1990s to its development into the largest and most powerful hotel booking platform in world.
This is the never-before told story of Booking’s rise, zenith and moral decay; of extravagant parties, runaway internet experiments, duped shareholders, manhandling managers and boardroom squabbles. Above all, it is the story of a company that built the supreme online money-making machine, but in the eternal quest for more, forgot the human beings behind it.
