Ask HN: Need help monetizing our site - suggestions (pivot or otherwise) welcome

I'm not sure if you have seen our video on our website but we have certain features (e.g. - invoicing functionality and rooming list feature) in the group organiser's dashboard already. There are lots of features which we could potentially add down the line to add value to their overall offering.

We are essentially looking for an alternative revenue stream, because we are not converting enough groups through our website. We don't want to arrive at a situation where hotels aren't winning any business through our website. So we are essentially hoping to move away from commission to something else.

Go with sponsored search, its way more above board, people recognize it from Google and its easy to integrate into the search results (usually). That way you get commissions from people who book, you get money from people bidding on ads, and hopefully you can get commissions as a travel agent when people click through an ad.

Just an idea, but you could look at catering to the non-English speaking crowd. Specifically, the Chinese love to travel in big groups and they will usually skimp as much as they can on accommodation, in order to splurge on gifts and souvenirs. A cursory search turned up only very few sites that offer international hotels group buying options, even though group buying is extremely popular in China. Obviously, it would take you some time to understand the Chinese and their needs, but I'm pretty sure it'd pay off in the long run.

What about the model used by flightfox where the customer pay a fee upfront to find the best deal available? It would change a bit from what you are currently proposing but it could be a lead.

I know it can seem strange/hardcore at first but if you guarantee the best deal they can get, in the end you might make it work.

You could maybe offer this option at first and see how many people are willing to pay to ensure a good offer by hotel for a large group of people.

I think a major factor in conversions isn't that people are seeing offers and booking it themselves. The problem is that people sign up and fill out a form (and register) expecting to see prices right then, and instead have to wait at least an hour to see prices.

It may be better UX to show some hotels immediately via a hotel booking API and have very prominent messaging that they will receive lower offers within 24 hours. I'm already assuming you're emailing them with new offers (with tracking pixels) to determine if they're even opening, if they click through, and then what they do.

You should accept payments on your site... for several reasons.

1: Increase conversions - Not only because it's a quick and logical flow through the site, but also because you may be deal with people that don't want to talk to hotel agents on the phone and would rather get everything done online.

2: Know exactly how your business is doing - If you're just relying on the hotel to pay you the correct amount, you're leaving so much information about your business on the table. You can gather some, but informally. It'd be useful to know at what step people aren't converting, what is triggering changes, etc.

3: Shift responsibilities - Make the hotels invoice you.

4: Influx of capital. Paying hotels every month still makes it look like you have a lot of activity on the books. I dont know what your goal with the site is, but activity like this would be good to show to investors, interested buyers, etc.