SKEMA Digital Marketing in Tourism and Events: Bidroom.com

Bidroom.com, a new website launched in January, 2014, is a free platform providing hotel bookings. The most interesting thing is that it allows hotels biding for the guests rather than guests searching for best price online by themselves. The website brings new idea to the online hotel reservation and maybe will break OTAs’ dominant position.

The process of booking a hotel on bidroom.com is simple. Firstly, customers enter details about the trip on the home page, including the city, the date and the rate of the hotel they want(3-star to 5-star). Then, the website will transfer the information to all eligible hotels directly. After receiving that, hotels will offer their “bid price”—the room rate, on the website. Once there is a price, the system of bidroom.com will send customer a link by email automatically to have a check. Within 24 hours, customers can compare the prices among different hotels and make the reservation, while hotels can compare their prices with competitors’ and lower them to get customers. Furthermore, customers are welcomed to send messages to the hotels directly to ask for cheaper prices or free packages.

In order to give a more specific explanation and better understanding of the new website, a simulation booking was handled to see step by step how bidroom.com can benefit customers.

Step 1, entered the city Berlin, the date 05-03-2014 to 07-03-2014, 3 star hotel, 1 double room. Then, bidroom.com showed that there were 77 hotels in Berlin could compete for you.

Step 2, about 10 minutes later, an email was received showing that the 1^st hotel has placed a bid.

Step 3, checked the price provided by the first hotel. Notice that there was a 24 hours countdown clock on the right side of the page.

Step 4, the price of the first hotel lowered after the second hotel placed its price. Notice that there was one hotel fully booked on that day.

Step 5, 22 hours later, 4 hotels in total had placed their bid. In addition, the other 4 hotels indicated that they were already fully booked. The system encouraged guest by email to book the hotel before the expiration time.

Step 6, booked the hotel with credit card information. If guests are not satisfied and don’t want to book any hotel, the website won’t charge anything.

As shown above, bidroom.com introduces a new way to hotel bookings. Guests may consider it as a wonderful experience because they feel empowered and get the best favorable price. Furthermore, no registrations are needed so that users can avoid trying to remember the account name and password. Obviously it’s a customer oriented website. As to hoteliers, they save the commission fees and are able to communicate with end customers directly through the website freely. Although Bidroom.com was only 1 months old, it has gained good reputation among hotels, customers and media.

However, the newly-born bidroom.com is not mature enough in some aspects. Firstly, insufficient hotels limits the performance of the website. As shown in the simulation test, only 4 hotels replied which leaves the guest not many choices. Moreover, bidroom.com only covers 46 cities at the moment which should be improved in the future. Secondly, prices on the website are not guaranteed as the best price. Comparing prices of East Side Hotel provided by bidroom.com, booking.com and TripAdvisor respectively, bidroom.com got the best price which is €158, €20 cheaper than that of booking.com, shown on Picture 1. However, things are not always going like that. The room rate of Amaryl City-Hotel am Kurfuerstendamm on bidroom.com is €360, which is same to booking.com, while the best price is provided by Hostelworld which is €253, shown in Picture 2. That means customers can’t always get the benefit from bidroom.com. This fact will damage the brand image of bidroom.com which is mainly focus on the cheaper price. Thirdly, at present, bidroom.com only provides hotel name, package information and access map which are insufficient for customers to make the decision of booking. Customers have to go to TripAdvisor, booking.com or hotel official website for more information and customers’ reviews. It leads to the possibility of making customers give up reservation on bidroom.com and back to traditional OTAs. As a result, providing more information about the hotels and even guests’ reviews are important for bidroom.com.

Picture 1.