https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wired-work-smarter
For Sam Shank, entrepreneurship is a way of life. Having always been passionate about starting a company, in 2010 he founded HotelTonight, the hotel booking app that is giving the sharing economy a run for its money. Operating exclusively through mobile bookings, HotelTonight procures last-minute hotel rooms - which can only be booked one to seven days in advance - in more than 1,700 cities across the world. The company expanded from the US market to the UK, recently entering into a partnership with Chelsea Football club. Here, Shank shares his entrepreneurial story.
I always wanted to start a company. My dad's an entrepreneur, he's an architect. I grew up in a small town where the most successful people were entrepreneurs and that was always my model. I originally wanted to be a movie director, though. I networked a lot and got an opportunity to be an assistant to Wes Craven on Scream, which was an amazing experience. Then I realised I didn't want to be a movie director and that Hollywood wasn't much of a meritocracy and it wasn't very entrepreneurial. So, I said, I need to be in a place where I can have a much greater chance of doing what I want to do, which is build something, and build something that is meaningful and that inspires people. That's really been my motivation.
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I worked for internet companies and I realised that there was a chance to start a company - it was a chance to fulfill the creative dream I had. I worked for about ten years, learned a lot, and started my first company about 13 years ago. That was a hotel review site [TravelPost] that we sold to SideStep, and SideStep then sold it to Kayak.
When I had the idea for HotelTonight I knew I wanted to do something with mobile and last-minute booking, and it was important that it be very different from anything else that's out there. That's a way to stand out in the market and really make a difference. Now, HotelTonight still has the fastest booking in the world at ten seconds, and it's only on mobile.
At the beginning, a low was answering all the customer service calls myself. That was a low when the phone would ring at three in the morning. We launched the business, that was an immediate high. We got the idea, we decided to go for it. Ten weeks later we got the app built and we worked incredibly hard during that period of time. It's just a wonderful, creative chaotic time when you're releasing a product. And then there was this big moment of "it's out there and nobody knows and nobody cares". We had amazing deals with hotels like the Roosevelt, some of the most iconic boutique hotels, but we weren't getting any bookings.
In January 2011, we set goals for ourselves and we're still very goal- and metrics-oriented. We said, "We're gonna do 100 bookings, so three a day". We ended up doing 55, and half of them were us and probably the rest were people we knew who were just doing it because they were feeling nice. So, the big question was whether or not we had a business. We knew we had a product that people thought was really cool, but that doesn't pay the bills. It was pretty scary for the first few months. What we realised was there was a time between when people find out about the product and when they need the product. So that means there's discovery and then months later there's a booking.
I'm a big to-do list person and one of the most important parts of a to-do list is to have one - so consolidate all the post-it notes. I used to have post-it notes and then a couple of online to-do lists, so consolidating all of those into one area and then prioritising what you're going to do throughout the day with a highlighter. Another that comes to mind is that we have an open-office environment, which boosts collaboration. But when you need to get in the zone, [you should have] a good pair of headphones as a signal that you're concentrating on something.
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I think overall it's a very positive thing, because it's opening up new ways that people can travel and making travel more accessible. Our hope is that people travel more frequently and they have great travel experiences. We help people do that in a very different way from AirBnB - we're last minute, about getting into a hotel quickly and spontaneously. For AirBnB, it's more focused on leisure, a longer length of stay and it's usually booked further in advance.
There are a lot more similarities than differences. The idea on the consumer side is that people need a place to stay and they want it to be a great place and get value for money. That's a universal need, it could be anywhere. And hotels also have a universal need to make money; they're commercial operations and when they have an empty room it's not generating any revenue for them. So the value proposition needs to be strong for both sides. In terms of what was different, we adapted the product to specific needs of the UK market. We wanted to make sure that when people opened it, it didn't look like an American product, that it felt conversational. We have a voice - I describe it as your coolest best friend, the person that's in the know and can give you those tips.
What we're seeing is, mostly because of the weaker sterling, people in Britain are travelling locally and staying within the UK. And that's playing into the favour of hotels here and there's a lot more inbound travel. So, from what we've heard from our hotel providers, it's actually helping the hotel and travel industry. I think that London is going to remain a wonderful city to visit. There's so much to do here and I love the culture, so I don't see any change in that with Brexit. The travel industry is just such a wonderful industry for local economies and it creates a lot of great jobs. I don't think our governments want to turn that off.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
