Founders of hotels.com start new venture
Dallas Business Journal - by Katherine Cromer Brock Staff Writer
The founders of hotels.com have announced the launch of getaroom.com, a new online hotel booking site.
Bob Diener and David Litman, who sold hotels.com in 2003 and have been laying low under a five-year non-compete clause, jumped back into the Internet travel industry Wednesday.
Getaroom.com’s offices and call center are based in Dallas, with about 30 full-time employees, 20 part-time workers and up to 50 call-center employees, Diener said Wednesday. Many of the workers were hired from hotels.com or competing sites such as Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz, he said.
“Our expertise in the hotel industry is unparalleled,” said Litman in a news release. “Bob and I literally launched the online hotel booking industry back in 1995 with hotels.com, and its predecessor Hotel Reservations Network.”
Getaroom.com provides clients with hotel descriptions, maps, photos and a side-by-side comparison with other properties. The site also offers the ability to book airfare and tickets to popular attractions.
There are two ways to book at Getaroom.com. The first is what consumers are used to — going to a Web site and booking the room.
The second way is to register with the site, then call the company's call center, and get an “unpublished rate," which is 10-50% lower than other Internet rates, Diener said.
“Hotels don’t want their rates published,” Diener said. “Occupancy is weak across the board, but hotels don’t want to lower their price across all distribution channels. We won’t publish the rate, so it allows them to offer a much better rate to consumers.”
If consumers aren’t happy with their booked rate, they can cancel at any time.
“We could not have found a better time to launch,” Diener said. “People look for better values. The hotels know us. We can be much more nimble than existing companies.”
Diener said he and Litman started hotels.com with an investment of about $600 each. The start-up of getaroom.com is a “multi-million-dollar” launch, he said. Revenue projections for the first year are about $45 million, Diener said.
Radio promotions for getaroom.com began Wednesday. Television commercials will begin running at the end of the month.
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