Hotel booking website

I have a really good idea for a hotel booking site. Its a bit of a niche market tho so I think I might be onto something good but I am trying to understand the workings of those sites.

Can anyone tell me how these websites make money? Do they charge commission to the customer or do they charge the hotels?

Also how do they book rooms etc, whats the workings behind the booking system.

Does anyone know how the block booking system works???

Much too big a set of questions for a board. You need to talk to people in the hotel industry, in the IT industry, Enterprise Ireland, local authorities, private investors, your bank, etc, etc.

There's a number of ways in which these sites work :

1) A simple web-based front-end to the actual reservations system

2) An allocations system that uses availability to send the booking to the hotel chain

There's also a number of ways of generating revenue

1) Directly from the customer making the reservation (5% - 10%) booking fee charged to the credit card at the time the booking is made

2) Hosted ads

3) Charging the hotels , car-hire firms, air-lines for referrals / bookings

Block bookings are usually handled through travel agents / tour operators, but some on-line systems can handle them directly.

If you want more detailed information PM me.

Always nice to see someone interested in pursueing a business idea... however i'd be very cautious with this field...

> There are many very extablished players (1800, expedia, hostels.com, hostelworld etc.) who have huge resources and connections with hotel owners.

> The pricing model is typically a markup on room rate and a small booking fee... the big part here is the size of the markup... to be able to get a big markup websites typically buy large numbers of rooms well in advance and therefore get a discount... this model itself has some major risks:
1) a huge outlay of capital to book rooms in advance with no customers
2) the risk of not selling on rooms
3) the risk of future events making rooms less attractive (e.g. say you'd made a booking for 10,000 rooms in the states in july 2001 for use in september 2001...)

> Margins are inevitably tight, as there are not only lots of hotel res. sites, but the hotels themselves.

> You might find that some of the existing sites make more money off non-core activities such as ad sales and car rentals.

> the only part of the market not already developed is the small scale guesthouses/b&b end... which might be vvery expensive to set up integrated booking systems for...

I don't mean to knock your idea, im sure you knew a lot of the above... just no harm to think things through fully.

Best of luck

Thanks for the info folks.

I know its a risky business and there are some huge players out there but I just thought of this the other night. I think I see a gap in the market for this so am willing to pursue it. I just dont know where to start lol I'll do my research into it but I just wanted to see what people thought. I have a good book cant remember the name of it, its like a tool to put ideas through to see if they are fatally flawed or not.

alot of good info on this site monetizing websites etc