A word from TJ Mahony CEO & Co-Founder

Have you ever searched for guest reviews before selecting and booking a hotel online?   Most likely you have because it’s easy and extremely helpful to find and evaluate guest reviews of hotels through sites such as TripAdvisor, Hotels.com and a slew of other travel sites to make a more informed booking decision.

But what if you’re not staying in a hotel?  What if you are seeking to rent a vacation home in Orlando for a family trip to Disney World or a ski house in Steamboat or a cabin in Smoky Hills, NC?  Where can you: (i) find trusted accommodations; and (ii) read the reviews of prior guests?   To date, finding these alternative accommodations is not only difficult, but finding authentic reviews of past renters is near impossible.   FlipKey is focused on addressing this gap within the travel market.

FlipKey allows consumers to search for vacation rentals based on their travel requirements (bedrooms, price range, location, pet friendly, etc.) and then presents available rental homes and authenticated guest reviews from real people who previously rented the home.

The value proposition is straightforward, however, there are numerous challenges within the vacation rental market that have discouraged larger travel sites from pursuing similar offerings.

Two Primary Challenges:

Fragmentation:  There are over 1M vacation rentals worldwide.  An estimated seventy percent of these homes are managed by property managers with the remaining thirty percent managed independently by the owner of the home (commonly referred to as RBOs – rent by owners).   There are over 2,000 property management companies and over 100,000 RBOs.   All parties act independently and the industry does not offer a global distribution system (GDS) to provide a single source of vacation property information, availability and booking options..  Long story short, it’s very difficult to aggregate and organize vacation rental inventory.

Guest Review Process:  If I want to leave a review of the Sheraton in Orlando, I can easily self navigate to TripAdvisor, search for “Orlando Sheraton” and submit my review.   Conversely, if I stayed in a vacation rental in Orlando there are over 10,000 unique vacation homes in the area.   As a result, there is no clear process for identifying where or how to leave a review on TripAdvisor or any other site.  Thus, unlike hotels, the vacation rental industry has historically not been afforded the benefit of robust guest reviews.

FlipKey launched on March 28, 2008 and has made substantial progress in overcoming these challenges.   As the first and only independent reputation and guest review service built specifically for the vacation rental industry, FlipKey already features over 50,000 vacation homes across all 50 states within the U.S. and will soon expand to the Caribbean, Mexico, Canada and Europe.    FlipKey’s patent pending Reputation Manager™ is the industry’s first proactive guest review service which invites guests to leave reviews of the vacation home they stayed in based on confirmed booking records.   FlipKey recently announced it is powering guest reviews for the industry’s largest software company (Instant Software – which works with managers that represent 225,000 vacation rentals) and is working to bring the FlipKey solution to all industry participants.

We at FlipKey love vacation rentals.  Vacation rentals provide a much more spacious, affordable and personal lodging, but the lack of predictability (compared to hotels) hinders overall consumer interest/conversion.   If FlipKey can offer the largest searchable directory of vacation rentals and accompany its inventory with verified guest reviews we are confident we can help promote vacation rentals to a broader consumer audience and improve the consideration and booking experience within the category.

An introduction by Josh Bochner, CEO of Jigadig

For many bargain hunters and online shoppers, finding The Best Deal is their holy grail, and their quest to find it usually starts and often ends with Ebay.

However, Finding The Best Deal should be a more involved and thorough process Including checking all the popular auction sites [Ubid, Overstock and Ebay] and then comparing those prices against the lowest retail price available from an online merchant, using your favorite comparison shopping engine.

Some of the more religious deal shoppers go through this process to finding the best deal, but the majority rely on Ebay. Why?  Some may speculate that the process is too tiresome, and others are Ebay addicts and simply can’t break their habits.

Well now is a good time to break free and open your eyes to what’s out there.  See good video here.

A new breed of website has sprung up to protect the Ebay and auction shopper from getting caught in the traps of outrageous shipping prices (unaccounted for while bidding), bidding wars, and shady reputations of sellers. Gumshoo.com is one such site, while Getitnext.com is another site designed to help Ebay shoppers navigate the vast selection of products more efficiently.  While these sites are helpful for searching Ebay, one may wonder if those accustomed to shopping on the Ebay site will extend their comfort zone to search Ebay using another platform.

“That was the big question when we built Jigadig.com, ” says Josh Bochner, CEO of the company. Jigadig, a new auction search engine, set out to give auction shoppers, bargain junkies and comparison experts the best features possible to find the best deal on any item. Jigadig.com currently aggregates results from the top 3 auction sites (Ebay, Ubid and Overstock), making it a better way to search and browse auctions.

Formatted in a clean, search-friendly design, Jigadig.com allows users to view the full details of a product within their search results, making browsing easier. Jigadig.com also boasts other fun features, such as the “Pin-It” option, which enables users to easily bookmark items, compare them  side-by-side, save them and even share them with friends!

The site also has a built-in Friendlist feature with shopper profiles to make auction shopping social. But, be assured, this is not just a gimmick to be another social site. “Auction shopping is tricky, and shopping with friends is fun” Josh Bochner says.  “A friend’s advice can make a big difference. We built Jigadig to be easy for shoppers to share items and get feedback from each other.”

Jigadig.com will continue to add other trusted auction sites to their results and build in other fun and useful features. For those wary of the auction traps, the site will soon enable users to compare auction prices against the lowest e-tail rates on items to ensure they’re getting the best deal. Overall, Jigadig.com hopes that all of these features will make for an easier and more engaging way to shop online.