New booking site invites hotels to bid for guests

A new style of hotel booking website that invites hotels to bid guests has been launched.

Bidroom, which started this month, is a free platform that asks travellers to fill in the dates and location of their stay. The information is then passed to hotels who have 24 hours to respond with an offer, according to the Guardian.

The hoteliers will be able to see other bids on the table, in order to be able to compete to offer the guest a lower rate.

"It's absurd that hotels and customers have allowed themselves to be bullied by these middlemen, who basically add no value at all for the traveller," said Mark Bradshaw, co-founder of Bidroom. He and four friends who work in the hotel industry came up with the idea after hearing hotels complain that booking sites' commission rates were so high they were robbing them of their margins.

"We're just doing this because we think it's a good idea. The running costs are pretty low. We just wanted to shake everyone up a bit."

Bidroom takes no commission, compared to some OTAs which take as much as 18%-25% for each transaction.