Does anyone remember when you had to call a hotel to make a reservation? Remember Travel Agents and paper tickets? Soon we won’t.
That’s because companies like Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity showed everyone that there was a better way. They put hundreds of millions of flights, hotels and cars online and made it possible for anyone to instantly make a reservation – at any time, almost anywhere in the world – without needing any help from middlemen or confirmations days later.
It completely changed the way we thought of reservations.
Since then, new services have put new forms of accommodation, even as far as people’s sofas and spare rooms online for reservation. New hotel rooms have been incrementally added to the available accommodation pool. And booking engines have gotten better at delivering full fidelity, real-time availability and integration to hotel reservation systems. But it has always been incremental additions and changes.
DormDorm.com isn’t looking for incremental change: we want to go big and scale fast. Within the next two years, we will bring 500,000 previously unavailable hotel-style rooms to the online reservation market, bringing the largest consolidated, managed accommodation pool of the last decade to the mainstream.
How?
There are approximately 1.8 million dorm rooms spread out around the US in major urban centers and beautiful small towns. These rooms sit mostly empty for three months every summer – when other rooms are at a premium. They run the gambit from private triple rooms with shared bathrooms to full apartments with kitchens, living rooms, private bathrooms and bedrooms. One thing they all have in common though is that they are private, safe, clean and significantly less expensive than hotels.
What makes us think Universities will rent out these rooms? They already do, and Europe has been proving this works for years. All over the country we see universities offering their excess room inventory as hotels for conferences and the persistent individuals who track them down.
What makes us different from what’s happening now? – I’ll let eHow.com explain:
Step1
Go online or call the local chamber of commerce for the area you would like to visit, and get a list of educational facilities.
Step2
Zero in on private colleges and trade schools such as Embry Riddle and DeVry Institute. They often have dorm rooms for rent. Check their websites or call their toll-free numbers and ask for theconference services department. Some of these facilities also rent space for retreats.
Sound easy? We don’t think so either.
By plugging these rooms into mainstream reservation engines, we’re making them actually available for real people working under real constraints to increase conversion and occupancy.
In doing all this, we’re not only making more rooms available to more people, at more affordable prices, but we are also returning hundreds of millions of dollars back to higher education institutions who have seen funding and grants plummet in recent years and costs go up. The value proposition is clear, and the infrastructure is largely already in place.
We have a pool of very talented engineers already working on the project and supporting it moving forward, a plan to go to market, solid financial and business models and we’re already working on pilot programs with limited universities this summer for a full roll out and dedicated sales push starting in Q1 2011,
If you can see the potential for massively opening up the budget and family travel markets with DormDorm.com, check out the investment game on TheStartupBus.com and show your support! http://game.thestartupbus.com/i/edf7ed2
If you have any questions, please contact Justin _at_ DormDorm [dot] com and we’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have.
