Oistr Development, Travelocity, Expedia, Opentable

This is my first blog entry about my latest business venture.

Statistics show that satisfaction with online travel bookings is actually falling. That's not what you'd expect considering how many companies there are and how they're all trying to improve themselves.

How can this be? Well it's been pointed out that industry growth is slowing and in order to compete, the big companies like Travelocity and Expedia need to differentiate themselves by adding silly crap and unnecessary flashy features.

Did they ever ask what customers want?

Our thoughts were how about a website that caters more to customers than businesses, adds a social networking aspect, is map-based to give a geographical reference and even provides games aimed at getting people outside even if it's in their own town.

It's still in development, if anyone wants to take a look at how it's developing you can see it here. We're still working on plugging in the content. Business listings are provided by a bunch of sources to give the most content, Yellow Pages, Martiniboys for nightlife, Open Table for good restaurants and Travelocity themselves for hotel content.

The big players seem to cater to the hotels and destination businesses and put them above the customer. Travelocity treats customers pretty well, but these guys all seem to have a phobia of stepping on businesses toes.

We want people to post pictures and videos of any business listed on our site. Post your own picture of a hotel room right under the business's advertising version, let people see for themselves if they're liars or honest.

There's a company called Tripit.tv that encourages people to make videos of their hotel rooms, (most travelers have a video camera, at least they have video on their cell phone) and then they'll get a cut of the commission if that hotel is booked through Tripit.

Inherently, the system is designed so that people only make good videos. In fact, even if the place was crappy, they'll still make a good video because otherwise they have no shot at a commission.

What if you could post a video if it was good or bad? The incentive here is that you can prove how bad it was, we don't just have your word for it. If you're quick enough to catch a desk agent being an ass, post it. That's the honesty factor. Plus, the hotel has the option to respond in public, it's a conversation now between customer and business.

We have high hopes. I'll keep updating as we go along. I hope people try it out.