Technology

We built Guestmob with a focus on pricing. We’re solving a technology and data problem, and we are approaching it very differently than most people in the hotel industry. In fact, we’re not all from the hotel industry. Today, hotel revenue managers are looking at a restricted data set, using limited software and they only have the scope of one or a handful of properties to make pricing decisions. We think it’s a much larger puzzle, and as tech nerds, we’re loving every minute of solving it.

Black-Scholes

We started by observing the similarity between hotel pricing/prices and financial derivatives. Hotel prices can be volatile and this is why looking for deals feels like a scavenger hunt for consumers. Hotel values also follow a curve similar to that of a financial derivative. So we used a similar model to determine our exclusive prices. Ultimately, consumers don’t care, they just want discountsand that’s what we offer, plain and simple.

Mob auctions

We realized that many hotel managers sitting on last minute inventory would be eager to offload said inventory at aggressive discounts if the transaction was structured properly. So we designed these simple auctions for hotels to unload blocks of rooms at incredible discounts.

Every week, we conduct these mob auctions with our hotel partners, when we have a large enough group or mob. Participating hotels offer the best rate possible and that’s when we assign the entire mob to stay. Only hotels that have been selected to be in a collection can participate in the auction. To minimize conflict with the hotels’ other channels, the discounted rate offered to Guestmob by the hotel is not published. Most of our customers will have booked using Guestmob’s exclusive price.

Inspiration from airlines

Airlines use complex software to predict supply and demand to set prices. Similarly, we’re using supply, demand signals, coupled with intelligent learning algorithms that adjust prices almost daily to determine the optimal discount for everyone. Furthermore, we are tracking social signals from our most influential customers, and we reward them with even better personalized prices, as well as one-off rebates.

So what’s the best way to save? 

Book early and keep sharing to help grow the mob on Guestmob.