New online accommodation initiative bids for travellers

Australians could soon pay less than half the advertised rate for hotels and other accommodation following today’s launch of Australia’s first online booking service that enables travellers to name the price they want to pay for a room.

Ubid4rooms.com, which is being officially launched tonight by NSW Tourism Minister, Matt Brown, is unique because it allows people to bid for unoccupied rooms and enjoy the best possible rates or immediately take up competitive last minute offers available in a 14-day window.

Ubid4rooms.com Managing Director, Gary Berman, said Ubid4roooms.com was different to the many other website accommodation booking sites, as it did not simply offer up thousands of last minute rates.

“Unlike other online booking services, Ubid4rooms.com enables people to make a confidential bid for a vacant room and have an answer back from the hotel within three hours,” Mr Berman said.

“It’s like e-bay for the tourism industry except it is not a competitive bidding process. Travellers can lodge bids with up to three hotels at one time and once a bid is accepted the others will be automatically deleted.

Mr Berman said while the online booking market was flourishing and forecast to represent close to 20 per cent in accommodation sales by 2011, the value proposition of the sites had diminished.

Initial results of a research program currently being undertaken by Ubid4rooms.com, suggested that in most cases, last minute sites promoted rates that were equal to or more expensive than the rates hotels offered directly.

“Ubid4rooms.com will change the face of online accommodation booking and bring value back to consumers,” he said.

“At the same time this initiative will benefit the accommodation industry, which on average has some 60,000 rooms sitting vacant throughout Australia each night. Increasing the number of people undertaking spontaneous travel will generate more demand for rooms.

“The bidding concept has already proven successful in international markets, that enable people to bid on a mystery hotel product. In the UK, RoomAuction.com has generated one million pounds sterling in its first four years while Priceline.com in the US has posted $3 billion in bookings. The Ubid4rooms offering is superior to these sites because consumers can choose the hotel they want to stay in rather than just bid on a mystery hotel.”

Mr Berman, who has over 20 years experience in the hospitality industry, developed the concept based on the philosophy he used while managing hotels.

“I have a passionate belief that a room vacant for a night is revenue lost forever, and a property only has a limited supply so this revenue cannot be made up in the future,” Mr Berman said.

“While the cost of selling a room varies from property to property, the large majority of a hotel’s costs, such as staffing, will be the same whether a hotel has an occupancy rate of 67 per cent or whether it is fully booked.”

Ubid4rooms currently has 50 properties signed up to the bidding concept across Australia - including properties from Meriton Serviced Apartments and Leisure Inns - and expects to have more than 100 properties listed by the end of the year.