I'm currently employed in the hotel industry. I really have no defined role, but I perform a lot of the GM roles. I can give you a few things to think about.<p>First and foremost, the chain to which we belong just got out of a long fight with a large Online Travel Agency [OTA].  During this "fight", the chain really noticed that OTA's had a stranglehold on the online room distributions, especially the rates so in response, they have "initiated" some policies to nip that in the butt. (OTA's are currently killing Vegas)<p>I will show you the breakdown of our reservation distribution this year: 55% CHAINWEBSITE.com, 27% CHAIN Call Center, 9% GDS Travel Agencies, 9% Third Party Websites (broken down into Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity). In short, due to our policies we CANNOT offer a lower price outside of our best available rate available on the CHAINWEBSITE.com - we could null our franchise agreement.<p>I only speak for one chains policies, but this chain has 6k properties and another 1k or so in development. It's not small.<p>Thats one thing to think about. Some more thoughts:<p>Getting GMs to lower rates is tough; if you give guest X rate Y, and guest Z finds out, they also want rate Y. It sometimes makes a messy situation dealing with this. Selling rooms in important, but keep rate integrity intact is also important.<p>Chicken/Egg conundrum. How do you plan on getting hotels to participate?<p>-- In response to the above, I would personally like to search my geographical area for any travelers without having to sign the hotel up. Can I do that? Why not?<p>Some solutions to the above thoughts:<p>Instead of getting hotels to directly negotiate prices, why not use a combination of that and a GDS system like Amadeus, SABRE or Galileo. You know, so if a hotel doesn't bid on their trip to offer occupancy, then they have the option of making a booking through your system opposed defaulting to Expedia (which books through the same systems). It might solve the intermittency between the chicken/egg problem, and having an active user base - attracting one before the other would be essential. Overall, I don't think the hotel industry will take kindly to having to bid for guests. On the other hand, there is LOTS of money to be had and I wish you the very best. Its an ambitious start!