Is there a demand for a well-designed hotel website service?

Nothing would please me more. If the cost were modest, I'd probably use it even for hotels that don't really 'need' it. (Franchised properties, and Best Western member properties, each have their own webpages on the big brand site. They might have a static website of their own, but click the 'reservation' link, and you go to the franchise organization's reservation page for that property.)

But that's just me.

The problem you're going to encounter in marketing such a thing is that owners of franchised properties expect the franchise to hand them everything - and if they don't, it's presumably because they don't have it to give. If the owner has a 72-room property, he expects the central reservations system to send him fifty new reservations a night. In real life, it doesn't work that way. So, he concludes, it's not possible: after all, Choice and Wyndham are professionals. Or, if it's a corporate-owned property, they might hire an in-house sales director, who'll try to pull it off by soliciting personal connections and face-to-face contacts in the area - 'sales' without any good marketing. There seems to be no convincing people that better can be expected or demanded of a hotel website.

The problem you're going to encounter with franchise organizations is, they're collecting fees and royalties on what they have at minimal investment to themselves, so why should they invest in anything more? (Likewise, why should a grungy biker bar with tattoo-covered topless dancers spend the money to renovate into an upscale gentlemen's club? They're already making all the money they can imagine with exactly what they have, and the overhead is as low as it can get . . . You get the idea.)




Here's my wish list: Stand by for lots of edits - and additions - over coming months: I'm just getting started. And I intend to never finish - this business is constantly evolving. (Anyone who tells you otherwise probably runs an older property with a badly dated '70's appearance that smells musty and is probably in need of serious renovations.)

Rate configurability:

I want more than 'Best Available Rate', AAA-AARP, and whatever whiz-bang promotion the franchise organization has going that, as often as not, has your hotel renting a room for next to nothing so the franchise as a 'whole' can benefit. One feature of a very suite-intensive (if not all-suites in all locations) new brand that we're working on (http://pinterest.com/beechmont27... , if you want an advance sneak peek) is going to be a rack rate that drops automatically if you request a stay of three days or more, and again if you request a stay of a week or more.

How can I distribute an app-widget for a hotel website? (I have created an app which allows hoteliers to create promotions. These promotions are auctions for hotel rooms day-by-day. The widget functions in the hotel website as a popup window.)

I'd love to have the need for something like that, but usually we have the opposite problem: empty rooms (meaning, for your system, no bidders at all; and the rooms we do rent go for fixed prices higher than a bidder might want to bid), and margins not all that good on the rooms we do rent, once all of our costs are taken into account.

Some hotels might want something like that for, perhaps, six days a year for special events, where the hotel will be fully booked weeks ahead of time. For example, on the local university's homecoming weekend, we know we're going to be full: the only question being, how much can, and should, we charge? (We want to be as profitable as possible, but if I can't get $220 for the $100 room on the big night, I'm willing to at least think about giving it to the guy willing to pay $190. On the other hand, if someone is willing to pay me $275 for it, that person will get it, no matter how many people are willing to pay $220. And there has to be a reserve of at least what we could get for the room at a fixed, what-we-guess-to-be-the-market-rate rate.) I myself have contemplated auctioning special event reservations on eBay to see how it would work out, but have yet to actually try it.

So -- with a little tweaking of what you apparently have in mind -- you might be on to something. Perhaps if you went about it that way . . .