A FACEBOOK application which enables the booking of hotels and planning of trips with friends has been launched by Irish firm Ticket Truck which hopes to become the engine of commerce on the social network.
The application allows Facebook users to plan trips with their friends, share those plans and then book the hotel without leaving the site. Users are encouraged to recommend the service to their friends by a guaranteed rebate of at least 3.5 per cent on each booking which is currently provided in the form of Amazon.com Gift Cards.
“Travel is basically social and social networking has come of age – Facebook is the winner,” said Charles Dowd, co-founder of Ticket Truck. “Facebook will do $2 billion in revenue so every big brand in the world is going to want to be in there. When they want to add commerce to their Facebook presence, Ticket Truck will be there.”
It was reported last month that airline Easyjet wants to add a booking engine to the current travel planning app it provides in Facebook. Ticket Truck plans to “white label” its technology so other firms can use it to sell products and services on Facebook.
The service is currently focused on the US market. The hotel inventory is supplied by US discount travel provider Priceline.com, which itself is primarily a US-focused service.
Mr Dowd said it was the first time that Amazon had sold its gift cards through Facebook or that Priceline had offered hotels through the service. As a result he said both firms were working closely with Ticket Truck on the initiative.
Ticket Truck is very different to other hotel loyalty programmes according to Mr Dowd.
“Your average American ‘soccer mom’ will probably only book a hotel twice a year but she might influence the choices of 15 other people,” he explained. “We want to be able to capture that and reward her.” He said Ticket Truck would also be able to compete with sites like Trip Advisor which already have large databases of reviews from people who have stayed at hotels. He said the authenticity of reviews was an issue on such services.
“You are much more likely to act on two or three recommendations from friends than 50 reviews from people you don’t know,” said Mr Dowd.
Ticket Truck grew out of a project at Mr Dowd’s previous firm Travelonomy, which was acquired by US student travel site StudentUniverse.com. The technology was subsequently spun-out of StudentUniverse.com
To date the company, which employs 12 people, has been funded by the founders and has received a research grant from Enterprise Ireland. It has offices in Dublin and Palo Alto, California, which focus on development and marketing respectively.
The US office is headed by Michael Geraghty, Mr Dowd’s co-founder.
