 Commercial Objective To offer the simple and efficient on-line and telephone hotel booking service selling UK hotel rooms. The revenue model was focused on the established 8%-10% travel industry commission structure. Funding/Investment Myself and my business partner provided the start-up capital which required which was invested in technical development, licensing and the start of a customer service infrastructure. Competition Whilst still early days of the internet we had three well funded competitors in the like of Lastminute.com, Expedia and Ebookers to compete with. Operations The angle built into this business was that by developing our own a geo-coded hotel database and technology it allowed us to deliver a much simpler booking process than any of our well established and heavily funded rivals allowing us to create our own market share. After getting the company operational and technology designed and developed I focused on business development scaling up the volumes and releasing a number of white label booking partnerships with fellow online companies such as Multimap.com, Streetmap. USP's 1. A geo-coded proximity database. 2. In-house bespoke hotel database. 3. Memorable independent premium value brand. 4. Super simple super intuitive on-line interface. 5. Friendly book over the telephone service. Performance In 4 years we grew the business from sketches on a piece of A4 paper to become a top 5 UK online hotel booking service with a staff of 6 delivering 300 hotel bookings a day. The business generated and average booking revenue of £110 with an average commission of £9.87 allowing the business to become cash positive at the end of the 3rd year when it was acquired by Hotels.com.
My role as CEO of the company involved: - Acquiring the brand and creating the business model. - Building the required commercial travel industry relationships. - Managing the technical development of the booking platform. - Launching and establishing the brand in the online market place. - Growing the sales volumes of the business. - Developing and negotiating the transaction which lead to the company being sold. Exit I exited the business after its acquisition. Software & Technology Used Or Implemented: PHP |
Hotel.co.uk |