We are 2 engineers working full-time on a hotel booking solution with no commission, instead of 18% practiced by sites such as Booking.com / Expedia. Hotels hate this commission, but they keep paying since Booking / Expedia bring customers.
Tourists know about these brands and go there to book hotels, even though there are hundreds of other booking & meta-search solutions. Note that they won't find better prices, since hotels aren't allowed by Booking/Expedia to post better prices online. So a site with a smaller commission can't post cheaper prices. Booking/Expedia also 'price match', just in case a tourist manages to find a better price. There's an exception with https://bidroom.com/ , which shows better prices after registration, so not 'publicly'.
Tourists also prefer Booking / Expedia since their booking is guaranteed and payment is safe with these known brands.
Would you have any out-of-the-box ideas on how one could disrupt these booking sites? Obviously, if there would be any straightforward steps, you'd do it yourself. However, if you don't have the time to work on it, but have interesting suggestions, would you please share for others to consider?
Thanks!
It's an uphill battle, and a slow one, but chances are now things might actually take a turn for the better because the OTAs have suffered under the crisis too. There's a lot of similar projects out there as yours, but it's also a huge market. It takes a lot of work on the consulting side, because hotels are an industry that's ages behind other digitally-capable businesses. So you should look more to changing their mind than looking at the guest side, trust me on this.
I'd be happy to talk and share what I know, we need every hand we can get to turn the situation around. I also work directly with Google Hotel Ads and can share some insights there. Ping me on the email that's in my profile, there's a lot to explain and it would take a book haha.
- what your current business model is;
- business models you attempted, but abandoned;
- reasoning of why the current model is broken besides an existing company having a monopoly;
- what you’re break even profit needs are
- what jurisdiction you’re in and plan to target;
- prior experience in the hospitality industry.
——
Lastly, (1) do you have any proof of “hotels hate this commission” other than your assumption that no one likes spending more money on a transaction than needed? Ask because unless you have researched this, the reasoning for why hotels use booking services might be that it’s cheaper than marketing their inventory themselves. (2) My understanding is the largest player in this space is now Google, how do you intent to deal with Google?