Honest Feedback on idea needed!
Hey all, I would appreciate your feedback on the following idea:
So, currently there isn’t any option for traveler to bargain the prices for hotel rooms or apartment online - they have to pay the list price on the usual platforms (Expedia, booking)
In this case they won’t get any discounts for long stay or multiple room booking.
What I‘m currently working on is that users can send an inquiry via a form and that this inquiry will be forwarded to the hotel managers where they can bid on the users inquiry.
Do you see value in this from user and hotel manager perspective ?
Thanks in advance for your feedback!
Users do bargain, it's not a main feature for the platforms for obvious reasons I would think. (better income and simplicity)
Airbnb lets the seller put discounts for periods for example.
But you can message owner on any platform and get private offers in one way or another on the platform or on alternative paths.
For single room, longer stay I'd say don't bother
For bigger bookings there might be a niche, I don't think there is a place that does that well.. and there is some need, due I don't know to quantify it or describe exact audience, there is some corporate need possibly but I wouldn't know how to target it exactly..
How does this differentiate from bidding for a hotel (which is done automagically with no human interaction)? Is it the long-term/multiple room aspect?
You're targeting wedding planners and event organizers on one front, digital nomads or traveling consultants for the other? I could see such a service prove valuable considering the transaction size - any optimization goes a long way.
One note: I wouldn't forward individual bids to hotel managers, since they already have their responsibilities and usually don't have an incentive to increase bookings (<<assumption). I would give hotel chains an interface where they could select a modifier for duration of stay / number of rooms: 10% week, 25% month, 33% quarter; 10% >3 rooms, 15% >5 rooms
@ovi First, thanks for your feedback! Regarding your question - Yes, it is the long-term/multiple room aspect.
Exactly, and that is also a pain point from my side - On one front I'm targeting traveler as a group, consultants / remote worker and digital nomads for the other. I don't know if I should target only one of them and how to optimize / monetize it.
The idea with an interface for the hotel sounds good - didn't think before about that.
I'd target the one who has the financial incentive to minimize hoteling costs - that disqualifies the business consultant (client pays) and the wedding planner (the guests pay). The generic traveler is harder to target (travel marketing saturated), leaving the digital nomad. They're easy to find online (even here)
Remember to steal from the pros: check out how Airbnb or Booking.com displays their discount setting for their hosts and copy it if it works for you. A quick look at their FAQs tells me some hotels may want to also specify time period when they'd like to offer the discount (seasonality ftw)