Opodo 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. Giovanni Bisignani, former CEO of Alitalia and present CEO of IATA was Opodo's first CEO. 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. In 2002, David P. Scowsill was appointed as Opodo's CEO, replacing interim CEO Simon Tucker. Prior to founding of Opodo, Orbitz was negotiating with European air carriers, trying to get a deal with them, but they were hesitant to participate in a company where the majority was owned by US carriers. In 2004, the company was bought by Amadeus for 62 million euros. Since 2011, Opodo is part of the largest online travel company in Europe, eDreams ODIGEO.
IPO
Parent company eDreams went public in 2014. Independent Board Member James Hare oversaw the public launch on April 4, 2014. eDreams offered its stock at 10.25 Euros per share. That stock price had fallen to 1.02 Euros by October 24 of 2014, wiping out over one billion Euros of market capitalization. Some commentators called the launch “Europe’s worst performing IPO of 2014”. eDreams moved quickly, asking their shareholders for authorization to “Discharge to Mr. James Otis Hare for the exercise of his mandate as director of the Company until his resignation as of 25 March, 2015.” eDreams issued the following announcement: “Effective March 25, 2015, eDreams ODIGEO accepts the resignation of Mr. James Hare as an Independent member from the Board of Directors”. In June 2015, CEO Dana Dunne introduced a new strategy focusing on mobile, revenue diversification and customer experience improvements, which led to a strong turnaround in business performance.
Criticism
Opodo.com and opodo.co.uk have a “poor” rating of 2 stars out 5 on the online review platform Trustpilot, and a rating of 1.2 out of 5 on the review platform Reviewcentre. 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.
