Ok here’s a startup idea. Basically a combination of Agoda and Tripadvisor (basically a front-end combining those two backends). I’m looking to book a hotel for a forthcoming holiday. So what I’ve been doing is to search through agoda for hotels available for those days and within my price range, and one by one searching for them on tripadvisor to see their ratings and comments and all that.
Now, the deal is this: Agoda is an excellent and reliable booking engine. However, it’s tripadvisor that has the reviews that I’d trust but it neither does bookings nor has details of availability or lowest price available. Hence I’ve to keep the two windows open which is quite frustrating and time-consuming.
For someone who’s experienced in developing web apps this is quite simple I think (since I have no experience or interest in this I’m just giving the idea away). A front end that queries agoda for available hotels and tripadvisor for ratings of these hotels and then presents both together in a nice frontend. The actual booking can be done through agoda itself (to where there can be a link).
As for revenue, I’m sure hotels will advertise on this site. Problem, though is to get the tripadvisor reviews in a way that can be extracted to this third-party website without actually going to tripadvisor. But why would tripadvisor allow this since the reviews are their intellectual property and the basis on which they make their money? But well worth a try, I think!
Think one of the Indian websites, either cleartrip or makemytrip already offer reviews along with their booking option..also, the problem of two windows is solved by just staying on tripadvisor…their interface allows you to search for hotels and once you find something you like (based on the reviews), they automatically connect you to 3-4 websites where you can just book the room
Since, Tripadvisor already shows deals on Agoda as a part of their search results, it is just one more step for them to show availability directly. May be, they didn’t do that due to some disagreements on revenue sharing.
Hi everyone,
Please be careful with AGODA! They will lead you until the payment making you thinking that you are booking one thing but at the end you are booking less than what they promised!
Today I have make one reservation with a “BREAKFAST INCLUDED” filter active, I have selected the first option that appeared below that filter and at the end I DON’T have breakfast on my reservation! Printscreen of the option that I have choosen here: https://imgur.com/a/gL5Lb
AGODA pathetic answer was “The part where you see ‘Breakfast included’ is just a filter that shows rooms that could have the breakfast included on it.”
“filter is a higher-order function that processes a data structure (usually a list) in some order to produce a new data structure containing EXACTLY those elements of the original data structure for which a given predicate returns the boolean value true.” (filter definition on wikipedia)
I will repeat the key word, EXACTLY.
If a “BREAKFAST INCLUDED” filter is set it should retrieve EXACTLY all options which have…yes, you know it…it should retrieve EXACTLY all options which have “BREAKFAST INCLUDED”! But not on AGODA!
This clearly shows the posture and the way AGODA conducts their business: bad faith.
Run away from AGODA!
Best regards!