In an apparent move to become profitable, professional hotel-review site Oyster.com has abandoned its more than year-old practice of serving as a hotel booking engine and is turning to become a rating service.
Oyster started out as a site enabling consumers to book hotels on the site through a third-party inventory partner.
"We decided we did not want to be in the business of direct booking hotel rooms because there are already many, many options for customers who need a credit card system with which to swipe their card on a hotel booking," co-founder and CEO Elie Seidman told Tnooz.
Seidman says Oyster will instead put its differentiation efforts into things such as "being the expert hotel reviewer."
"This is a major turnabout for Oyster, which in mid-2010 argued that it could enhance its differentiation by serving as a venue for both journalist-written hotel reviews and taking consumers’ hotel bookings," says Tnooz.
Founded in 2008 and with $18.5 million in funding from the Travel Channel and Bain Capital. Oyster finds itself still experimenting with ways to make money, Tnooz says.
With direct-booking on the site no longer avaialable, consumers using the site can now read the reviews. They outline the pros and cons of staying at a particular hotel, and book rooms on third-party sites in several ways.
By David Wilkening
