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I think this is a great idea, and it would be a no-brainer for me to pay if you only charged when you save me money. I think customers (thinking of myself) hav

by dack 12y ago

I think this is a great idea, and it would be a no-brainer for me to pay if you only charged when you save me money. I think customers (thinking of myself) have a huge aversion to paying money for nothing, in the event there isn't a better deal. If there's any chance I am going to pay for a service that returns no value, I am going to be hesitant. Part of the problem is I didn't see any "success rate" metric, so I don't know what my chances are of saving money. If you knew it was almost 100% given enough days before the trip - then you could even give someone a money-back guarantee, which would kill the "pay money for nothing" objection as well.

xivzgrev 12y ago
Exactly. This was awesome until it asked me to pay $19 without any guarantee of success. Why can't technology automate this to make your cost basically $0? Maybe right now you're doing things that don't scale...but don't test your business model on that, test on what it will become.
rubiquity 12y ago
I completely agree. My wife and I would love and absolutely use something like this. If the service is passively checking for lower rates then I should only pay if it is successful at doing so.
atourgates 12y ago
I recently read a discussion of evaluating unsolicited vendor proposals that are supposed to save you money, by making the vendor take on the risk. For example, say a company promises that by using their product, you'll save $500 per month, for an initial investment of $5,000. Only take them up if they're willing to front the initial cost and pay themselves back with the savings, or at the very least guarantee the savings. This will quickly show you how much confidence the vender hasin their claims of savings. HotelSaver's pricing model screams, "We're not confident we can offer you any savings." If you're not confident enough in your skills or business model to risk $20 worth of effort on my behalf, why should I be confident enough to risk $20 on your skills and business model? My guess is that there's a wide variation in available savings, depending on things like how far in advance the hotel is booked, where it's booked, what hotel/chain the booking is at. While you might need some manual effort to find the best deal possible, I'll bet you could filter out "good" vs. "bad" prospects pretty quickly in a completely automated manner. For example, someone submits a reservation that's 40% below average rates for a stay in a week, at a hotel that doesn't typically price match? It should be possible to develop an automated system that says, "Sorry, we can't offer any savings on this reservation." Your staff doesn't spend any time, and your customer doesn't spend any money. Someone on the other hand submits a reservation at 10% above average rates at a hotel in 4 months? You can fairly safely take that bet and save them some money. Find a pricing model that lets you do this. Maybe it's a percentage of the savings, maybe a flat-fee that's refunded if you can't save them more than the fee. Maybe it's something else. Either way, you need to show your customers that you're confident in your ability to save them money. Another great service would be automated re-booking. Partner with a service like FancyHands, so that you can call and request price-matches/adjustments for your customers. For people like me that hate picking up the phone, it'd be a huge benefit. It would also let you verify/confirm the savings.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  This is patio11 level of advice. Kudos!
- matttah 12y ago
  Great advice on weeding out the ones we won't be able to find savings early so we don't waste time! Rebooking is on the roadmap just wanted to get the first version out and see if there was interest in this type of product.
- capsule_toy 12y ago
  I think your idea is fine for HotelSaver, but your example, $500 per month savings on $5,000 initial investment, is flawed. When you flip the script around, it's not just the vendor's confidence in your savings, but now the vendor takes on the following risks: - Risk of nonpayment because of the client - Risk of nonpayment because the client disputes that the saving is a result of the product - Payment is delayed until claims can be verified - Payment can be further delayed because of the client
op00to 12y ago
No "success rate", no free trial, no money-back guarantee. To build trust, you need to sacrifice. This concept makes no initial sacrifices, and comes off frankly smelling like a bad deal at best, and a scam at worst. I travel a lot for work, and I often keep tabs on hotel rates for colleagues who may join me last minute. I've rarely seen rates go down as I get closer to my stay.

by dack 12y ago

xivzgrev 12y ago

Exactly. This was awesome until it asked me to pay $19 without any guarantee of success. Why can't technology automate this to make your cost basically $0? Maybe right now you're doing things that don't scale...but don't test your business model on that, test on what it will become.

rubiquity 12y ago

I completely agree. My wife and I would love and absolutely use something like this. If the service is passively checking for lower rates then I should only pay if it is successful at doing so.

atourgates 12y ago

I recently read a discussion of evaluating unsolicited vendor proposals that are supposed to save you money, by making the vendor take on the risk. For example, say a company promises that by using their product, you'll save $500 per month, for an initial investment of $5,000. Only take them up if they're willing to front the initial cost and pay themselves back with the savings, or at the very least guarantee the savings. This will quickly show you how much confidence the vender hasin their claims of savings. HotelSaver's pricing model screams, "We're not confident we can offer you any savings." If you're not confident enough in your skills or business model to risk $20 worth of effort on my behalf, why should I be confident enough to risk $20 on your skills and business model? My guess is that there's a wide variation in available savings, depending on things like how far in advance the hotel is booked, where it's booked, what hotel/chain the booking is at. While you might need some manual effort to find the best deal possible, I'll bet you could filter out "good" vs. "bad" prospects pretty quickly in a completely automated manner. For example, someone submits a reservation that's 40% below average rates for a stay in a week, at a hotel that doesn't typically price match? It should be possible to develop an automated system that says, "Sorry, we can't offer any savings on this reservation." Your staff doesn't spend any time, and your customer doesn't spend any money. Someone on the other hand submits a reservation at 10% above average rates at a hotel in 4 months? You can fairly safely take that bet and save them some money. Find a pricing model that lets you do this. Maybe it's a percentage of the savings, maybe a flat-fee that's refunded if you can't save them more than the fee. Maybe it's something else. Either way, you need to show your customers that you're confident in your ability to save them money. Another great service would be automated re-booking. Partner with a service like FancyHands, so that you can call and request price-matches/adjustments for your customers. For people like me that hate picking up the phone, it'd be a huge benefit. It would also let you verify/confirm the savings.

toomuchtodo 12y ago
This is patio11 level of advice. Kudos!
matttah 12y ago
Great advice on weeding out the ones we won't be able to find savings early so we don't waste time! Rebooking is on the roadmap just wanted to get the first version out and see if there was interest in this type of product.
capsule_toy 12y ago
I think your idea is fine for HotelSaver, but your example, $500 per month savings on $5,000 initial investment, is flawed. When you flip the script around, it's not just the vendor's confidence in your savings, but now the vendor takes on the following risks: - Risk of nonpayment because of the client - Risk of nonpayment because the client disputes that the saving is a result of the product - Payment is delayed until claims can be verified - Payment can be further delayed because of the client

op00to 12y ago

No "success rate", no free trial, no money-back guarantee. To build trust, you need to sacrifice. This concept makes no initial sacrifices, and comes off frankly smelling like a bad deal at best, and a scam at worst. I travel a lot for work, and I often keep tabs on hotel rates for colleagues who may join me last minute. I've rarely seen rates go down as I get closer to my stay.