Is there a competitor to eBay for the hotel product?

RoomAuction is "the place where you set the rate you want to pay for a hotel room...".
That sums it all, eBay has found its challenger, at least for a travel product. This company has been founded in 2003 and seems to be quite easy to use. The booking process is still in different phases meaning you have to wait for an answer from the hotel to know if your bid has been accepted. Have you already bid for a room before?

Technorati Tags: hotels, hotel, ebay, roomauction, auction

Comments

[gilles]

The system appears to be close to Priceline. If so, it is quite good: about 5 years ago, I had a room in a 5 stars in San Francisco for 50 USD per night...

[Guillaume Thevenot]

Hello Gilles,

Not quite, Priceline is having an automated system via the GDS and the customer is getting an almost instant response to his bid where RoomAuction is still a bit manual. RoomAuction would probably send an email to the hotel. And then it is up to the hotel to action this potential booking.

[claude benard]

Hello Guillaume,

Interesting information ;-)

we can find a Relais & Châteaux
Le Saint Paul - Nice France
86 Rue Grande
06570 Saint Paul de Vence

who use the system

Well, they have to spend a lot of money to advertise their business !

we will see

regards

Claude

[Paul Johnson]

Nice idea... I was about to say "Isn't this what Priceline have been doing for years?" so thanks for the clarification.

Paul

[Bob Drapella]

Hi All!

I hope you don't mind me cutting in ;)Hi All!

I hope you don't mind me cutting in, but I might be of some help as far as RoomAuction is concerned .

Guillaume is right, we are more manual than Priceline, but this is more because of the personal touch we want to retain between hotels and their guests. What makes us different from Priceline is:
1) the choice of an actual hotel – so you don’t end up in a hotel you don’t actually know
2) a freedom of choice – send booking offers to up to 3 hotels at one go, and still you decide which one to go for as they reply with hotel’s offers
3) completely free and no credit cards required – you pay directly at the hotel
4) all contact details of each hotel as clearly marked, so you can contact them at any time to discuss specific details of your booking.
I hope this outlines our major benefits:) Obviously we are not as big as Priceline, but having said that at least we did not yet loose that personal touch. There are ‘mere’ 200 hotels that work with us, and we pride ourselves not to take more on board than we can satisfactory serve. As the website grows in highly targeted visitors, so the database of hotels does expand. I think that is the only fair way of making business here that benefits all three sides of it :)

Any questions? I would love to answer them all.

Kind regards

Bob Drapella
Managing Director
RoomAuction.com Ltd