[manicminer]

Nine months ago, an article "For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies" sparked some interesting discussion on HN [1]. Many of the topics discussed informed the development of our new product, Scout.

The perception of many travelers is that the best hotel prices are to be found at the big online travel agencies.

The hotel chains have recently been attempting to alter this perception by offering lower prices when you book via their own websites. This usually requires membership in a loyalty program but they have streamlined sign-up so that you can become a member during the checkout process.

This channel shift is really important for the hotels because they lose so much in commission to the OTAs, not to mention market relevance and a direct relationship with the customer.

Room Key is a joint venture between six of the largest hotel chains in the world and has unique access to these lower direct rates.

We have just launched a new product called Scout, a Chrome browser extension that activates whenever you view a hotel at major OTAs.

Scout looks at the lowest rate being advertised by the OTA and then searches in the background to see if it can find a lower direct rate. If it does, it automatically displays a notification along with a button that takes the user to the hotel's own site to book the lower rate and get additional perks of booking direct (e.g. points, free wifi).

For now the hotels Scout works with are mostly limited to brands belonging to larger chains (Marriott, Hyatt, Wyndham, Choice, IHG). E.g. try looking at a Holiday Inn on Expedia and you're very likely to see a Scout notification.

The OTAs are currently limited to the major players (Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, Booking.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity) but we hope to grow this list to include metasearch engines (Kayak, Trivago, etc) in the near future. We also hope to introduce the extension on other browsers.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14443291

[ceejayoz]

I'd appreciate a "how we make money" section on the site. It's not clear how (if?) you do, and that scares me a bit when considering an extension that'll run on sites that take my credit card.

[manicminer]

Great suggestion. We'll look into it.

We do make money from booking commissions, but our commissions are much lower than those of the OTAs and more importantly go to a company that is trusted by and founded by the hotel industry.

Room Key's raison d'être is to lower the cost of hotel distribution for the hotel industry and to be an advocate for the traveler in what is a very confusing marketplace for the average consumer. Price confidence is severely lacking hence why consumers are often searching up to 6 sites before making a booking decision.

Very few people understand how the online hotel industry works and we would like to start to cast some light on that.

[starchy]

I would also want to see a privacy policy before installing something like this.

[killion]

Roomkey is a joint effort by a number of large hotel groups, similar to how Hulu started. Their goal is to increase hotel direct bookings.

[bedros]

I use firefox as my main browser, it's a shame I need to switch to chrome to get scout functionality

[manicminer]

A Firefox version is high on our list