The founders of hotels.com have launched a new online hotel booking site, getaroom.com.

Published: 10 Jul 2009

The founders of hotels.com have launched a new online hotel booking site, getaroom.com.

Bob Diener and David Litman, who sold hotels.com in 2003, have come up with this new offering, which has been created to offer travellers “the very best values in booking hotel rooms and other types of lodging in major destinations worldwide”.

Diener and Litman have worked on a new model by trying to negotiate a great rate and letting consumers know the hotel’s name.

There are two ways to book at Getaroom.com. The first is what consumers are used to — going to a website and booking the room. The second way is to register with the site, then call the company’s call centre, and get an “unpublished rate”, which is 10-50 percent lower than other Internet rates, Diener said.

If consumers aren’t happy with their booked rate, they can cancel at any time.

“Hotels don’t want their rates published,” Diener said. “Occupancy is weak across the board, but hotels don’t want to lower their price across all distribution channels. We won’t publish the rate, so it allows them to offer a much better rate to consumers.”

Although the opaque models may offer great bargains, relatively few travellers use those sites “because people feel it’s too big a risk if they have to cancel, and people want to know what they’re getting when it comes to a hotel,” Diener said, according to a report filed by The Dallas Morning News.

Getaroom.com’s offices and call centre are based in Dallas, with about 30 full-time employees, 20 part-time workers and up to 50 call-centre employees.

Revenue projections for the first year are about $45 million.

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