Hotwire is an online travel agency founded in 2000 in San Francisco, California, as a joint venture between six major U.S. airlines. The company's cheap and last-minute offerings include vacation packages, hotels, rental cars, and flights in North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Travel companies make their unsold inventory available to Hotwire to fill bookings that would otherwise go unsold. Hotwire can offer the lowest prices because of its mysterious business model, which conceals the identities of individual hotels and travel providers.