At the age of 22, I am trying to change human behavior in the travel industry
We were having lunch last summer, and one of our co-founders mentioned that he often checks prices for car rentals even after he has already reserved them. At that moment, an idea popped into my head: why wouldn't this be automated for free? What happens to hotels after they have been reserved? Prices fluctuate based on so many different factors.
It is a commonly overlooked problem that hotel prices drop 44% of the time people travel after the room has already been reserved.
Recently, while trying to get market feedback, we started trending on Reddit's channel, InternetisBeautiful (https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/)
We managed to archive:
137K total views
407 shares
537 upvotes
It gave us a mental boost to know that people are ready for the service and want it. Now we are working day and night to make a platform that educates travelers about ways to travel more affordably with a simple solution of hotel price monitoring for free.
MVP is already running https://rebookify.com/, and people have very simple steps to use it:
- Forward the existing hotel confirmation email to [email protected]
- We send back a lower price once we identify that there is one
- You decide whether you wish to re-book
Our current challenges:
a) Technical: The same hotel has different room names on different OTAs like Booking and Agoda. It is a relatively rare case, but we are trying to solve it. Any advice?
b) Users: This product is more related to educating users about the existence of a problem; perhaps anyone has ideas and recommendations on how to market a service like this?
We are doing our absolute best to get early adopters, and I thought that Indie Hackers would be a perfect place for that. If anyone has some advice, I would be more than grateful for it. Thank you!
Maybe you've already thought of this, but do users need to know that hotels reduce prices after you book. I think all that they would care about is that if they use your service their room will be cheaper. I would guess people don't care about the how.
Thanks for the comment. Down the line, we will implement an option to rebook the room automatically. So far, it works as a notification system, so users have to be aware of the process as they are part of it
It's a good landing page.
"different room names" - you'd probably need to think more technically on what a room actually is from the customer perspective like number of beds, balcony/view, but also consider your likely audience is price sensitive, they probably don't care about expensive room types/amenities unless it's like a cruise or Disney parks...
Or more simply the customer probably doesn't care if it's a different room type if they get the same numbers of guests in. (You can also specifically indicate the room type might be slightly different and let them decide, giving more alerts would be better for your business than less if it's not exaggerated)
I'm not sure it's now a known problem, it's just that most people don't value it highly, you should focus on ppl in the price saving niches, compare sites, coupons ect rather than the full market or anyone booking hotels. (A secretary booking for a work event doesn't care to redo her work. People who value time wouldn't care. People who frequent book won't as much)
People who look at "what time of year is it cheaper to book hotels" or "when is the best price booking last minute or 3 months ahead", these guys are your target
Thanks for the comment, and I am glad that you like the landing page!
The first point is interesting; as for now, we work with identical rooms, but we could implement a 20% difference allowance so customers can decide whether the lower price for a different room makes sense in case the deal is amazing.
Regarding the problem, that's a fair point. We have to identify ICP very clearly to push it forward in the right marketing direction. Do you have any ideas on where and how to market it for price-saving niches?