"A market place for travelers to buy and sell prepaid rooms"

by @CJuppet

What is it, and why should you care?

Travtar is a new marketplace where one can buy or sell prepaid hotel rooms... what does it mean?

Imagine that you booked your hotel room several weeks in advance because you had to participate in a fair in Paris; unfortunately, you can't attend the fair anymore... and the hotel cancellation policy states that you can't be refund!

Then what alternative do you have? You connect on travtar and you just sell your room to someone who would like to stay in the same hotel on the same period!It's as simple as that!

Is this concept brand new?

We found that startup while surfing on Techcrunch (video of the founders' interview), and the company is supposed to be launched in January 2013.BUT we found out they had a competitor: Hallst.com, "Peer to peer hotel room trading"!

And we wondered about the main differences between these two concepts; as Travtar is not launched yet, we can't really determine all the benefits of the concept - but I personally think that Travtar marketplace is easier to use and less complex than Hallst.com!

vs.

Travtar vs. Hallst.com

On Hallst.com: - guests can negotiate room rates with hotels;- rooms offered are non breakfast included and non-refundable; - when you offer a price to a hotel or another guest, your offer is maintained for 24 hours, and you are charged with the service fee only if your offer is accepted from the seller or the hotel;- when you sell a room you are paid only 15 days after the operation, via Paypal only;- you can share your room offers on Facebook and Twitter!

// On Travtar, the selling process is supposed to be free, but the company takes 10 to 15% commission on each seller.

What about hoteliers side?

As FMKRS, and while talking about it with my colleagues, we thought about the difficulties that could be encountered from the hoteliers side: - booking agents and receptionists will have additional work when receiving last minute updates and profile modifications on the initial booking; - during high season, when a guest cancels his stay, the hotel will benefit from an additional revenue generated by a second different booking on the same room, because it is a most wanted date; - basically, hoteliers won't lose money, but they will not be able to really increase their revenue in case of cancellation or no show.

One can say that it's better to have someone else in the room than an empty room - but it's better to have a second high priced booking on the same room than a booking modification that will only bring ancillary revenue like minibar!

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http://futuremakersparis.blogspot.fr/