Gogobot Is Betting Its User Content Can Give It an Edge in the Hotel Metasearch Race
Skift Take
Is the quality of Gogobot's user generated content really enough to make a difference as it launches hotel metasearch and brings itself into conflict with more well-heeled rivals? Gogobot thinks so, but it really has a lot to prove.
If the U.S. hotel metasearch field was already crowded with players such as Kayak, Trivago, Hipmunk, Room77, and others, there's a new kid entering the competition, namely Gogobot.
Founded essentially as a social travel site in 2010, Gogobot has been earning revenue over the last 15 months from advertising and by linking off mostly to Booking.com for hotel transactions, but Gogobot was losing bookers as travelers shopped around elsewhere to ensure they were getting the best rates.
With the launch of hotel metasearch, Gogobot hopes to close that gap and to reduce the number of sites that people need to shop by combining comparison shopping for hotels from numerous online travel agencies with its ratings, reviews, filters and community, which it divides by special interests into "tribes."
"Our goal is to bring that number down and to be the go-to place when people are planning their travels," says Travis Katz, Gogobot co-founder and CEO. Katz cites Google statistics that travelers may visi
