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Hotel Innovations  (see  innovative travel business plans)

British easyGroup has set its sights on one of the missing links in its travel/entertainment empire: accommodation. Welcome to easyDorm!

After turning various industries upside down by launching the likes of easyJet, easyCar, and easyCinema, British easyGroup has now set its sights on one of the missing links in its travel/entertainment empire: accommodation. After all, if it's price-elastic, the easyGroup will go for it! Soon, after boarding orange easyJet planes, picking up an easyCar at the airport, and watching a movie in an easyCinema, consumers can get a good night's sleep in an easyDorm, all for next to nothing if booked well in advance.

Starting in London next year (New York and Paris could be next, source: USA Today), easyDorm will concentrate on providing accommodation only, and will not offer a restaurant or other services. Bedding and toiletries will be available for purchase for those customers who don't bring their own. Rooms will consist of pre-fabricated fibreglass units (nothing to break, no dirt accumulation), and come with a shower unit, a lavatory and floor mattresses inspired by Japanese tatami style bedding. An extra charge applies for those who choose not to clean their own room.

Opportunities

It will be highly interesting to see whether easyDorm can compete with more than just youth hostels and backpacker joints. It's entering a growing market though: there are around 60,000 rooms in the UK in budget hotels today, from less than 8,000 in 1992.

And changing travel and tourism patterns (not in the last place fuelled by sibling easyJet), with tourists going on short breaks non-stop and year-round, wanting to spend a minimum on transport and accommodation, and a maximum on experience, shouldn't hurt either.  Living in Paris, London, New York, Cape Town, LA or any other world city and want to get involved? On its website, the easyGroup invites anyone interested in participation to email them, so here goes: James Rothnie at james.rothnie@easyGroup.co.uk.  (Note: while we'd think easyDorm alone is a sizeable endeavor to pull off, the easyGroup is already planning easyPizza, easyBus and easyCruise. Springwise will track all of these new business ideas, and would like to thank easyGroup for the steady flow of inspiration;-)

Finding the perfect Hotel

Hotel search? Video completes the picture »

Launched a few weeks ago, Trivop claims to be the first online hotel video portal. Using Google maps to help users find hotels, the website gives them the next best thing to visiting a hotel in person—a video walkthrough. Each video begins with some street footage near the hotel. The video camera then takes the viewer up to the entrance and into the lobby and other public spaces, and on to a room. Videos are available for each of type of room a hotel offers (standard, deluxe, junior suite, etc), including shots of the bathroom and the view through the window. No running commentary, just some fairly innocuous background music. Additional information includes the five most recent reviews on TripAdvisor, a full street address and a link to the hotel's website.

French Trivop currently lists 144 hotels in Paris and 11 in London. Within a few weeks, the site will expand its reach by harnessing the power and video cameras of the masses. Travellers (and hotels) will be able to upload videos they've shot. In addition to amateur videographers, Trivop is also seeking freelance filmmakers to shoot professional videos: "Trivop is convinced that hotels must provide a video on their website. We want to open up many business opportunities for you by building the biggest community of filmmakers all around the world for the hospitality industry." About time, considering the very limited still and moving imagery most hotel websites offer. Thomas Owadenko, Trivop's founder, informs us that 500 filmmakers signed up over the past three weeks.

So besides the providing travellers with previews of hotels, Trivop will also tackle the B2B side by creating videos for hotels, or brokering between hotels and freelance filmmakers. With both professional and user-submitted candid videos, the website's visitors will benefit from the same kind of transparency that candid photos on TripAdvisor offer. Sources of revenue include production fees and hosting charges for hotel-directed videos, as well as referral fees. The company will also license its catalogue to online travel agencies. Trivop's main challenge is to build content and traffic quickly, since TripAdvisor (which has 20 million unique visitors each month and is owned by Expedia), started letting users upload videos last month. Watch this space!

Website: www.trivop.com

Contact: www.trivop.com/contact