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The reality is, we need a functioning hotel aggregator, and AirBnB needs a competitor. For me, booking.com for European travel has been overwhelming positive in

The reality is, we need a functioning hotel aggregator, and AirBnB needs a competitor. For me, booking.com for European travel has been overwhelming positive in experience, happy with the increasing Genius offerings. I don't use them for apartments however, I don't feel I trust them for that and prefer AirBnB. I also hope they stick around and maybe find a way to make all the cash they feel they can make without ruining what should be a very mutually-beneficial experience between hoteliers and customers.

mrtksn 5y ago
The business revolves around bedbanks contracting hotels and selling them to retailers and aggregators. There are exchanges, there are hybrid models and what not. That's why "2 rooms left" kind if messages are almost always total BS because every hotel can have more than one bedbank contract or the contract can be flexible and you can't know exactly how many rooms are left but you can query if the number of room you want to book is doable. At the end of the day, what you have is multiple networks that somewhat overlap and provide API for finding and booking and Web interfaces for the high street retailers etc. Making an aggregator means, you getting an access to these API and therefore there are many aggregators out there. The problem is, the margins are really tight at that point and you can hardly do anything about it. The money used to be in the high street retail where you can have fat margins and sell extra services like city tours, paragliding - that also have fat margins. The industry have seen quite a bit of squeeze both because of AirBnB and the aggregators. A good way to make a lot of money is to contract all the hotels in an area and sell the company to a bedbank like Hotelbeds. Now hotels are opening every day, things change every day so there's quite bit of people on the ground chasing hotels making deals and getting paid handsomely for it.
- clove 5y ago
  I travel a lot and find that my area rarely has the majority of its hotels listed on sites such as booking.com. What would I have to do, specifically, to get these hotels listed and get paid for it?
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    Right, so you can create a startup that contracts these hotels and sell your contacts to bedbanks like Hotelbeds I guess? I haven't been in touch with the industry since a while, so I can't give you too many specifics advice. A few years back, I remember a startup building a portfolio of Mediterranean(If I recall correctly?) hotels and end up selling the company to a bedbank for 30 Million USD. If you are not looking into making this into a full blown business, I guess you can take a cut as an agent by hooking up the hotels with the representatives of the bedbanks. Look up for people titled "Market manager" and see if you can arrange a deal with them. Market managers are people responsible of adding new hotels to the portfolio of a company and manage the relationship with these hotels, they usually make good money from commissions. It also often involves things like resolving errors with the booking software, teaching the staff how to use the interface etc.
    - clove 5y ago
      I live in Japan and want to give it a shot. Can you give me the step-by-step? Am I supposed to just contact anyone in the hotel industry with a "market manager" title on LinkedIn and tell them I can contact hotels for them?
      - mrtksn 5y ago
        I can't give you a step-by-step as this(collaborating with market managers) is not an actual profession that everyone does but a possibility that you can explore if you like to give it a try. I guess you can message people from linkedIn and see how they feel about it and maybe they can give you more ideas. Maybe you can consider to get in the industry and become a market manager?
grujicd 5y ago
Also positive experiences with Booking since 2005 :) What AirBnB gets horribly wrong is hiding exact location of property. In some cases, 200-300m make all the difference, e.g. directly on the sea coast or 10min up the hill, which can happen when the road goes around. Or is it directly next to a noisy club or in a quiet street behind. Or for skiing, whether you’re directly on the track or not. Probably all my searches on Booking start with basic parameters and then immediatelly switching to map. Also, even for locations I go often and know very well, and can easily find contacts of accomodations I’m interested in, I still choose Booking because it beats calling tens of different phones when single search shows what’s available for specific dates.
- vkou 5y ago
  > What AirBnB gets horribly wrong is hiding exact location of property. Without hiding the exact location of the property, they'll have other problems, like having the illegal part of their rental stock get discovered and shut down.
mupuff1234 5y ago
I've actually used booking.com recently to book an apartment that was also listed on Airbnb, and booking had a cheaper price (and better cancellation policy). So sometimes worth it to see if the Airbnb listing is on other sites as well.

mrtksn 5y ago

The business revolves around bedbanks contracting hotels and selling them to retailers and aggregators. There are exchanges, there are hybrid models and what not. That's why "2 rooms left" kind if messages are almost always total BS because every hotel can have more than one bedbank contract or the contract can be flexible and you can't know exactly how many rooms are left but you can query if the number of room you want to book is doable. At the end of the day, what you have is multiple networks that somewhat overlap and provide API for finding and booking and Web interfaces for the high street retailers etc. Making an aggregator means, you getting an access to these API and therefore there are many aggregators out there. The problem is, the margins are really tight at that point and you can hardly do anything about it. The money used to be in the high street retail where you can have fat margins and sell extra services like city tours, paragliding - that also have fat margins. The industry have seen quite a bit of squeeze both because of AirBnB and the aggregators. A good way to make a lot of money is to contract all the hotels in an area and sell the company to a bedbank like Hotelbeds. Now hotels are opening every day, things change every day so there's quite bit of people on the ground chasing hotels making deals and getting paid handsomely for it.

clove 5y ago
I travel a lot and find that my area rarely has the majority of its hotels listed on sites such as booking.com. What would I have to do, specifically, to get these hotels listed and get paid for it?
- mrtksn 5y ago
  Right, so you can create a startup that contracts these hotels and sell your contacts to bedbanks like Hotelbeds I guess? I haven't been in touch with the industry since a while, so I can't give you too many specifics advice. A few years back, I remember a startup building a portfolio of Mediterranean(If I recall correctly?) hotels and end up selling the company to a bedbank for 30 Million USD. If you are not looking into making this into a full blown business, I guess you can take a cut as an agent by hooking up the hotels with the representatives of the bedbanks. Look up for people titled "Market manager" and see if you can arrange a deal with them. Market managers are people responsible of adding new hotels to the portfolio of a company and manage the relationship with these hotels, they usually make good money from commissions. It also often involves things like resolving errors with the booking software, teaching the staff how to use the interface etc.
  - clove 5y ago
    I live in Japan and want to give it a shot. Can you give me the step-by-step? Am I supposed to just contact anyone in the hotel industry with a "market manager" title on LinkedIn and tell them I can contact hotels for them?
    - mrtksn 5y ago
      I can't give you a step-by-step as this(collaborating with market managers) is not an actual profession that everyone does but a possibility that you can explore if you like to give it a try. I guess you can message people from linkedIn and see how they feel about it and maybe they can give you more ideas. Maybe you can consider to get in the industry and become a market manager?

grujicd 5y ago

Also positive experiences with Booking since 2005 :) What AirBnB gets horribly wrong is hiding exact location of property. In some cases, 200-300m make all the difference, e.g. directly on the sea coast or 10min up the hill, which can happen when the road goes around. Or is it directly next to a noisy club or in a quiet street behind. Or for skiing, whether you’re directly on the track or not. Probably all my searches on Booking start with basic parameters and then immediatelly switching to map. Also, even for locations I go often and know very well, and can easily find contacts of accomodations I’m interested in, I still choose Booking because it beats calling tens of different phones when single search shows what’s available for specific dates.

vkou 5y ago
> What AirBnB gets horribly wrong is hiding exact location of property. Without hiding the exact location of the property, they'll have other problems, like having the illegal part of their rental stock get discovered and shut down.

mupuff1234 5y ago

I've actually used booking.com recently to book an apartment that was also listed on Airbnb, and booking had a cheaper price (and better cancellation policy). So sometimes worth it to see if the Airbnb listing is on other sites as well.