TLabs Showcase focus on startups featuring UK-based hotel business intelligence system iNNtelligenz.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

We are an inspired team of online travel experts and technology gurus focused on one thing - developing the most advanced suite of competitive intelligence apps for the travel/hospitality industry.

• Anton Kuznetsov (founder), concept, networks, servers and data harvesting - MSc Engineering, senior technical positions at RTComm, SvyazInvest, Rostelecom.
• Roman Peskin (founder), concept and design - MSc Biotechnology Engineering, hotel general manager, revenue manager, hospitality IT consultant.
• Bob Rogers (founder), industry advisor and angel investor - Cornell MMH, director at Expedia, senior manager at Nokia.
• Oleg Zaidiner (founder), back end and databases - Technion BSc Computer Science, senior technical positions at Symantec, Nokia-Siemens.
• Ruslan Sinitskiy (founder), front end and data harvesting - MSc Electronics Engineering, R&D engineer at the Ukrainian Space Agency.
• Robert Willis (CFO), angel Investor - Pittsburgh (Katz) MBA, CCA, auditor.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We are entirely self-funded. A combination of a very efficient back-end, a true online model that allows the user to easily do many things themselves, and some very talented people who have dedicated their time and passion, has made this possible.

What problem are you trying to solve?

The internet has radically changed how hotel rooms are sold. But it has also created massive chaos and information overload.

While tools such as Kayak help the consumer fight this chaos, hotels are left with basic rate shopping tools, and remain largely in the dark.

Describe the business, core products and services?

iNNtelligenz, the first product from iQueLab, is a competitive intelligence webapp for hotels that is both technologically and business-wise a game-changer.

By combining Kayak-like web crawling technology, the insights of Google analytics, and pulling it all together in an Apple-esque zenned-out user experience, we equip the blind hotelier with a powerful yet easy to use market x-ray device.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Our primary customer with the first version of iNNtelligenz are hotels, whether chain or independent, small or large, luxury or economy.

Any hotel situated in a market with more than 30 hotels will gain significant value from iNNtelligenz.

We are working on versions of iNNtelligenz that are optimized for chains, OTAs, property owners and analysts/researchers.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

We spent over four months working with a regional hotel group on refining the app before commercial launch, as well as consulting numerous industry experts for their feedback.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Our approach is to make a B2B experience more B2C. This means, easy and instant access to the tool, a two-week free trial, and the ability to add hotels and adjust competitive sets on the fly.

We want this tool to be accessible to every hotel in a significant market, so we have subscription model with a pricing structure that makes it affordable for smaller, budget properties, as well.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Our efficiency - we are able to offer an incredibly powerful app with very low operating costs.
• The team - a brilliant combination of technology expertise and real-life hotel revenue management knowledge.

Weaknesses:

• Our marketing resources: we are primarily focused on making the best competitive intelligence tool out there. This restricts our ability to spend money and resources on getting our name known. Our recently announced partnership with EZYield should go a long way towards addressing this.

Opportunities:

• More insights - there is a goldmine of information available on the web. The trick is to present it in a clear way and show patterns. There are way more valuable insights available from the data we collect.
• Greater Integration - obviously market level information is invaluable in helping to determine the correct price for a hotel on any given day. This data can be easily added to revenue management software to give a ‘reality check’ on pricing recommendations.

Threats:

• Blocking by OTAs - although our approach aims to minimize site disturbance when harvesting data, OTAs may decide to make it more difficult to access their pricing information. Given that the OTAs are using the same basic technology to benchmark each other, this is unlikely.
• Spreading ourselves too thin - we are a small team, and although there are many additional opportunities out there, we need to maintain a high level of discipline to ensure that we don’t take on more than we can handle.

Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?

A colleague of our CFO was convinced that the service would not take off because the target market (hotels) was too narrow, and there was not sufficient demand for insights into market dynamics.

We did not listen because the person in question worked in the area of web design, and had no hotel revenue management knowledge. Our own experience and the feedback from hotels in our beta program suggested that a clear picture of market trends for the hotel industry was long overdue.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

Every hotel in a medium-sized market (those with 30-plus properties as competitors) knows of iNNtelligenz, and a significant proportion of those have signed up for the free trial.

From there the rest is easy!

TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.