Software provider sets new way for hotel online bookings

Danuchpong Savetsila, a founder and project manager at NetCreatic, said his company could not beat the influx of global online booking agents and needed to adjust to survive.
NetCreatic developed www.atsiam.com 14 years ago to service online hotel bookings from individual tourists, with the website generating most of the company’s revenue at between Bt700 million and Bt800 million annually.
Thailand’s popularity as a tourist destination has seen the arrival of many online hotel-booking players including major companies.
Danuchpong said that as a relatively small enterprise in comparison, booking volume via www.atsiam.com had gradually declined over the past three years and it was likely to drop further.
“We had to think seriously about how we could carry on the business and have an innovative product to strengthen the existing business,” he said, adding that the niche market was the company’s target.
That market pressure led NetCreatic to create www.roomscope.com, which allows guests to explore a hotel and choose their room. Danuchpong said Roomscope was a revolutionary service that proved innovation was key to survival in the e-commerce sector.
The company spent three years developing the website and during that time it needed an overdraft from Kasikornbank to support its cash flow, with the bank setting up a payment system.
“We have to take photos of real hotels and we use Google Maps to show the landscapes of the hotels,” he said of Roomscope.
“It is not easy to develop in the short term like a general e-commerce website.”
Customers of Roomscope are different from those who use www.atsiam.com, he said. Hotel operators like the former because providing people with a landscapes of properties allowed them to make a quick decision on reserving rooms without the need to ask questions like is the room close to the sea? Or what does the room look like?
“We think providing landscapes can help differentiate our hotel-booking service from others,” he said.
Danuchpong is confident that it would not be easier for other online hotel-booking companies, even global players, to deliver a similar service because it required much time to develop and it was not easy to provide landscapes for all hotels for players in the mass market.
At present, 60 mostly boutique hotels use Roomscope, although it is not yet generating a return. Danuchpong hopes that the website will become a major income contributor in the near future, however.
He said all the hotels using Roomscope were Thai operators as he wanted to service hotel customers in Thailand before going global.
He expects that it will take up to three years before Roomscope offers a full range of services.
He said that while Roomscope was yet to generate a return and www.atsiam.com’s revenue was in decline, the company’s other websites such as www.flowers2thailand.com, www.sukati.com and www.atsiamtour.com had stable incomes.