Automating hotel room bookings for groups and events with Skipper…

Jason Shames, CEO and CoFounder of Skipper (a marketplace to help groups and events find hotel rooms – (bio)) joins joins Pavan Bahl , Samantha Shankman and John Matson at the MouthMedia Network Studios.

A successful company pivots, 9 rooms matters, and an RFP platform

Shames shares the genesis of the company as Jetaport six years ago, originally making planning trips “suck less”, and team-members working for private companies building mobile apps, having some success but seeing transactional issues with groups as an offline experience for above 8 rooms. Weddings as an example, a proprietary algorithm force ranks hotels, and building out their own RFP platform.

Building relationships, studio popcorn, and rebranding

Manually building relationships with hotels, creating a collaboration engine, making the service feel like a white glove experience and like customers had an advocate, and providing booking advisors. Snack time involves air-popped popcorn (popping during the interview). Shames reviews changing the branding from Jetaport to Skipper, being able to focus on consumer messaging and focus communication, how it was like building a new company with an existing base, and whether event planners are useful.

Supply partners, growing in the medical space, and automating offline processes

Being able to deliver top class results with one-time transactions with high margin. Owning segments of the demands to work together with supply partners. Growing in a marketplace of the medical space. Being forward-thinking in the deployment of technology, how broadly defined groups mixed with elasticity in supply offer potential for growth, continuing to automate offline processes, and how to best serve hotel partners and consumers.

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