Event: 2022 Phocuswright Conference
Product: @hotel
HQ: Washington, D.C. U.S.
Principal(s): Konrad Waliszewski, CEO & Co-Founder; Andy Acs, CPO & Co-Founder
Funding: $15M
Product Description: Tripscout’s booking platform, @hotel, is the first hotel booking platform for social media. Leveraging a network of the largest and fastest growing social media brands, customers can send a direct message (DM) on Instagram with the word “hotel” and the @hotel chatbot will send them a private booking link with the best discounts available – typically 25-75% off public rates. Due to the closed user group that is created in the private direct message and the organic growth that does not require paid customer acquisition cost, @hotel is able to offer the best discounts in the industry.
Business Model: We are an OTA that sells 500K+ hotels to our customers as a merchant of record. Our 40M+ organic audience enables us to maintain high margins while also passing along significant savings to our customers that are typically 25-75% off market rates due to our closed user group pricing over private direct messages and no customer acquisition costs.
Competitors: Booking Holdings, Expedia Group, Hopper.
Competitive Edge: @Hotel has a higher value customer (spends 4x the industry average) and lower customer acquisition costs ($0 vs 38% of revenue) than our competitors.
@Hotel is the first OTA for Instagram & we offer exclusive hotel deals to our organic audience across our @hotel & destination portfolio. We have 40M+ Instagram followers, growing at 2M+ per month.
Market Opportunity: Social commerce is expected to be a $1.2T industry by 2025 as consumers increasingly shop directly through their social media, messaging, and entertainment apps. Leisure travel, a $1.4T industry, is the largest and best industry to be disrupted by social commerce as 97% of travelers already use social media to plan travel, users spend an average of 2.5 hours per day on the platforms, and Online Travel Agents (OTAs) are struggling with an unsustainable customer acquisition arms race that requires them to spend an average of 38% of revenue on customer acquisition.
Early Customers: Our customers are frequent travelers that use social media as a source of travel inspiration and planning. These high-value travelers average of 5+ trips per year and average $500+ per hotel booking.
