New business - Accommodation service - Need your Help!

[Ashley Coddington]

Hi all,
I have recently started a business where we source and book contractor/business accommodation on behalf of businesses. The idea is to save them money as we find the cheapest deals on the web and also to save them time searching for the accommodation. We source and book all the accommodation on there behalf.

My issue i am having is getting businesses to use me and trust me. I have recently been cold calling and sending emails but am struggling to get any replies or people interested in this.

I know there are businesses out there already who do this type of work but how do i get them interested in my business and does anyone have any advice on how i can do this?

Thanks in advance for your replies, much appreciated.

Ashley

 

[Stedurham]

Sorry there's that many price comparison site available for this why would I use you? Plus how would I even find you

 

[Mark T Jones]

It’s a very tough field, not least because of the prevalence of price comparison sites

Your service needs to go well beyond price comparison to meet a specific need or set of circumstances that they have. Do do this, you need to define your target market..

 

[ImranR]

At best you can approach councils and insurance companies who need to re-house people from time to time and may not have the resources or expertise to do this themselves. A lot of hand holding involved talking to tenants and policyholders to meet their needs and requirements. There are a few companies in the market that do this already and they also help find short term rentals.

 

[Ashley Coddington]

Thanks for the responses all, I think your right I need to offer something else to separate me from the rest and the idea of councils is something that I will definitely look into.
What other type of service would go well with this type of business do you think?

 

[MikeJ]

Whenever we book an exhibition, we get calls from accommodation people offering deals on hotel rooms. We always sort this ourselves and the calls are really annoying, but companies clearly think there's business to be had in this way.

(I tend to give them abuse because we're on the telephone preference service, but that's a different issue).

 

[fisicx]

Spoke to my wife about this (she travels a lot on business) and they just use google and booking sites. Unless you can save them a lot they won’t be interested.

You would need to the first listing on google for them to even know you exist.

 

[Nochexman]

Have you identified which sort of organisations you would like to provide this service to? If you have, go and see them and ask them how they go about doing this and how a new supplier could make their lives easier.

 

[Maxwell83]

You are essentially an agent, and people tend to only use agents when going direct is not an option or a very difficult task. Personally, I would rather use a price comp. site and book direct and cut out the middle man unless that is not possible or not realistic for one reason or another (e.g. the suppliers only deal with agents and not end users or I have a specialist need and the agent understands and has already got solutions lined up for that need).

This is not because of price but because if its a straightforward transaction I do not want to add another link in the chain - now I have to worry about the end supplier AND the middle man getting it right, which doubles my chances of something going wrong!

 

[Qukaylan]

I also think that you should target large companies. Small companies can do this job easily for their employees. And, as previously mentioned, try to figure out how you can differentiate your company from crowd as competition in this field is very high

 

[Darren_Ssc]

My issue i am having is getting businesses to use me and trust me.

I used to work in shopfitting, like more than 10 years ago, and there were business then trying to offer such a middleman service that was nothing short of useless.

The reason you are struggling is that you're offering a service that nobody wants or needs.

 

[Socio South West]

The reason you are struggling is that you're offering a service that nobody wants or needs.

There is a market for this service... its just finding it....
As said elsewhere in the thread, if a company gets onto the Exhibitors List for any large exhibition the phone and email go into overdrive with stand fitters and accommodation agencies touting their wares.

The type of business that OP is looking for is probably a large business where one person or a small team is centrally responsible for exhibitions, conferences etc, and can outsource parts of their task, including accommodation arrangements.

The task for OP is to identify these businesses, and get in there quick!

 

[Ashley Coddington]

Thanks for all your feedback, its much appreciated.

Do you think the best way to contact these larger companies is just old fashioned cold calling or would you use a different marketing stratedgy?