Hotel on the beach? You better be right

The Beachfront Club, a new website, aims to help travellers find hotels with “true beachfront”. WIT (Web in Travel) talks to co-founder Chris Ryan, based in Thailand, for his pitch.

Q: In a tweet, state what you are trying to do with this business.

A: Create an exclusive, niche marketing club for hotels with true and absolute beachfront location and to be the global authority on beaches.

Q: Describe the business, core products and services.

A: The world’s only dedicated beach and beachfront hotel finder: The Beachfront Club is the world’s first and only authority on ‘true beachfront’ hotels, and has qualified over 8,000 accommodation worldwide that meet our strict, ‘right on the beach’ criteria – from budget bungalows to 5-star resorts.

Our detailed, hi-tech beach maps enable beach-lovers to find true beachfront hotels quickly, and ensure no one is ever misled again by hotels without absolute beachfront locations.

Here visitors can book their hotel with complete confidence in their on the beach or sea-front locations.

We are not a booking engine, but we will provide convenient links through a range of affiliate partners, plus direct links to our Premium Members’ own on-line booking systems.

As well as providing accurate information on genuine beachfront hotels, our interactive functions are being built to make this the biggest single source of information about beaches worldwide.

Q: Who are your key customers?

A: Group 1:Every true beachfront hotel, resort, villa, guesthouse, beach-house, bungalow or restaurant in the world.

Group 2: Every beach-lover on Planet Earth.

Q: Who are your key partners?

A: We will be affiliating ourselves with all the major professional booking engines globally, and also hope to eventually form cooperative relationships with relative public and private authorities and associations, with particular concern for the scientific studies, environmental protection and sustainable development of the world’s beaches, such as Blue Flag, Green Globe, and the like.

Q: What business are you most likely to be compared to?

A: range of different interactive Web 2.0 websites, especially any niche hotel club or travel community sites, photo-sharing and even social networking sites, without the banner ads.

Q: What problem are you trying to solve for your customers?

A: Our hotel customers – the problem of not optimizing the inherent competitive advantage that their true beachfront location gives them, and seeing their non-beachfront neighbours take a share of that business, often with an implication that they are right on the beach.

Our visitor customers – the problem of never really being 100% sure when they make their booking from their home….if the hotel they have booked truly is absolutely beachfront. We will provide the ultimate proof of genuine beachfront location for thousands of hotels, a qualification that people around the world will trust.

Q: What is the revenue model and strategy for profitability?

A: Front door stream: Premium Membership fees for hotel members who wish to improve their marketing advantages.

Back door stream: Affiliate partnerships with key booking engines.

Q: What is the market opportunity? How scalable is this business?

A: We have currently mapped over 8,000 hotels worldwide, and estimate 2,000 to 3,000 more which still need to be sourced.

Based on the two revenue streams, both market opportunity and scalability are almost limitless, as long as beach holidays remain the most popular holiday destination, globally, which is most probable, and people around the world continue to seek true beachfront hotels, year after year, beach after beach, destination after destination, and country after country.

Q: Who are the team members and advisors?

A: Co-founders are John Everingham, former publisher and photographer, and Chris Ryan, former hotelier; Wei Liang Yu – executive director.

And a hard-working team of researchers, developers, code-writers, editors and lawyers scattered between Hong Kong, Thailand, Russia and Argentina…..all good advisors.

This is an extract from the latest Web in Travel newswire – www.webintravel.com 

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