European internet booking system provider FastBooking has launched Collection-Hotels, a high-end portal for the four and five star hotels in its system to give them another route to consumers.
The site is entering a growing marketplace and follows in the footsteps of other European sites such as Mr & Mrs Smith and Escapio.
FastBooking also joins a number of other B2B technology providers that have seen the consumer route as a potentially lucrative add-on to their businesses.
Collection-Hotels currently features around 135 of FastBooking’s luxury hotels and includes booking facilities, reviews, detailed information, maps and sharing tools through Facebook.
As host and aggregator, FastBooking collects a commission from each hotel on every booking through the system.
FastBooking says the new site has the potential to be “pretty big”, although it admits that marketing will be minimal – relying on referrals from its existing sites and word-of-mouth.
The tech firm already has 50 other B2C sites, although most are low-key affairs and act simply as pseudo-affiliate distribution platforms for hotel partners.
Collection-Hotels will be different, the company says, because the hotels are hand-picked by its team and “a lot of effort” has gone into creating the site.
Hi FastBooking colleagues,
Congratulations on the birth of your new baby – it’s looking good. Escapio celebrates its 5th birthday soon and we’ve managed to tackle various tricky obstacles over the years. The most serious issue at present is of course the financial crisis, which concerns the whole industry. Its an ambitious project to be launching another player into this niche market in the current climate, but we wish you good luck and look forward to following your progress.
Best regards,
Uwe Frers
CEO Escapio
Yet another hotel site jumping on the luxury bandwagon? Which members of their team will hand-pick the hotels and have they visited every single one? How have they been picked – under what criteria, how are they vetted and chosen. All unanswered by the site I think
Putting effort into a website does not, in my book, constitute a point of differentiation – it should be a given.
That said, it will be interesting to see what they can do in this market place with all that technology behind them. And it’s always good to have good competition!