RoomerTravel:Boarding RoomerTravel is a platform that offers people the ability to sell non-refundable hotel products and recover the loss of refunds, which is a great deal for buyers.

For hotels, Roomer has increased They increase the number of direct bookings and occupancy, food and beverage revenue, customer satisfaction and loyalty. For OTAs and travel agents, Roomer increases their revenue and reduces the time and effort of handling cancellations.

In recent years, online hotel booking has grown rapidly, with 70% of internet users in the US booking hotels online, and the size of the online third-party agent hotel booking market in China reached $4.24 billion in 2012, a 31.2% increase year-on-year. With the popularity of online booking, the cancellation rate of hotel bookings is also rising. As hotel rooms are "perishable" commodities, once a customer makes a reservation in advance, the hotel will reserve the room and not accept other reservations, so if a guest has an unforeseen situation and cannot stay on the specified date, the cancelled room will be difficult to resell to other customers, and the hotel will naturally lose the revenue from the room. According to statistics, the annual economic loss caused by the cancellation of hotel reservations around the world totals about 10 billion U.S. dollars.

Therefore, in order to reduce the loss caused by customer cancellation, each hotel will establish detailed cancellation terms and conditions. Especially in recent years, with the intensification of the price war, hotels have launched special rooms, so its terms and conditions on the withdrawal of reservations are becoming more and more stringent, more and more hotels require customers to pay the full amount of the room when booking, and are not changed or cancelled. Even if it is due to force majeure or flight cancellation or delay, the hotel may still charge the traveler a certain amount of money.

As changes to the itinerary or cancellation of hotels occur, the loss of travelers can be imagined, but hotels also have their own difficulties, who give way will cause financial losses. In the catalyst of the hotel room "difficult to return reservations", online booking hotel second-hand platform was born. The actual fact is that the actual price of the hotel is not only a good price, but also a good price. The seller will also get a corresponding return, reducing the loss of compensation for breach of contract. Therefore, the online hotel booking second-hand platform activates the idle non-returnable hotel trading market, establishing a new "re-sale" online hotel booking model.

The "re-sale" intermediary model

The principle of operation of the online hotel booking second-hand platform is not complicated, it will user The platform receives a commission from this, which helps the seller to recover part of the deposit loss while enabling the buyer looking for a hotel to stay at the hotel at a more favorable price, and the hotel will also receive the full amount of the room, realizing a win-win situation for the hotel, the user and the platform.

For example, a tourist booked the Sheraton Hotel at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, CA a month ago at a rate of $282/night. However, due to a temporary matter, he had to cancel the trip. However, the hotel's terms and conditions explicitly state that no changes or cancellations will be accepted for paid rooms, and that the hotel will still charge 100% of the first day's room rate in the event of such a situation. In order to recover the loss of his prepayment as much as possible, he posted a resale through Roomer, an online booking platform for secondhand hotel rooms, at a rate of only $160 per night, or 43% of the original price. Because the price was much lower than the market price, within minutes, a buyer bought his hotel reservation.

Focusing on the U.S. online hotel booking secondary market, the Israeli company Roomer was officially launched in April 2013, belonging to the traditional O2O model platform. The company is a traditional O2O platform. Through the online establishment of a security verification system, offline travel agencies to open up channels to quickly accumulate a number of users. Within a month of its establishment, Roomer has already received a US$2 million capital injection from BRM Group, a venture capital group. The platform currently covers three major U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas.

Compared to transferring or booking hotels through a forum, Roomer has a more sophisticated verification system that verifies the kernel to the travel agency or hotel to ensure that each transfer is authentic and reliable, and a payment system that secures payments and minimizes risk. Another advantage of Roomer is its ease of use. All the seller needs to do is provide the price and description of the hotel they want to resell, and the Roomer system will automatically process this information to create a new listing with additional information such as photos and maps of the hotel for the buyer's reference and booking.

The first to break into this blue ocean was the Israeli company Cancellon, founded in 2010, which uses a commission system to make a profit, charging the seller 10% of the price paid by the buyer as a service fee, and reselling hotel rooms on Cancellon at an average of The average price of a hotel room resold on Cancelon is 60% of the original price. Once the resale is successful, Cancelon contacts the hotel to change the guest information on the order, and then forwards the latest details of the order to the buyer.

Another Spanish online hotel booking startup Hall St. has a more special profit model, if the transaction is successful, Hall St. will charge the buyer a commission based on the star rating of the hotel sold, 3 Euros/night for a 3-star hotel, 4 Euros/night for a 4-star hotel. Hall St. currently covers hotels in European cities such as Barcelona and London.

According to Roomer, the average occupancy rate of hotel rooms in the U.S. is 60%, with budget hotels generally outperforming star hotels. From the marginal effect, adding an extra room to the service does not add too much cost to the hotel, but will bring additional revenue due to other spending of the staying travelers. For the hotel, the cooperation with the hotel second-hand booking platform means that once the transaction is successful, the hotel party will receive the estimated room payment while the occupancy rate will also be improved, and it is possible to drive other supporting consumption in the hotel. In the whole process, all the hotel party has to do is to change the guest's information.

The segmented market faces challenges

In the era of sharing economy, the "re-sale" of idle products is not a new concept, from The company's CEO and co-founder said this market accounts for about 5% of the total non-returnable hotel booking market.

While the potential opportunity is huge, the hotel booking secondary platform faces a number of challenges for an emerging niche. One of them is that the capacity of the market is still very limited, not all hotels booked online are non-refundable, and whether users will choose the platform to resell once they need to return a reservation depends on both the customer service experience that the platform provider can provide, including convenient payment and security systems, and on whether it can hold enough rooms in more cities. Another problem that cannot be ignored is whether the second-hand platform can open up sales channels. If the hotel party does not accept the platform's changes to user information, it means that the business will end in failure, and the platform's sales ability and integrity will be greatly reduced. In order to effectively solve this problem, Cancelon, Roomer and Hall st. are striving to establish partnership strategies with large travel agencies and hotels to ensure that they bring benefits to hotels while enhancing their own customer base.