Former Wall Street Technology Exec Launches Baarb.com, the First Personalized Hotel Booking Platform
(PRWEB) June 07, 2017 -- Baarb.com is a personalized hotel booking platform, where everyone can find the perfect hotel for a business or leisure trip faster and easier than ever before. Think of Baarb as the Netflix for hotel booking. Baarb, a Los Angeles-based company, is now launching to the public.
The founder and CEO of Baarb is Barbara Parshall, a former financial industry executive who led institutional technology platforms and helped launch hundreds of successful startups.
Barbara Parshall: "When booking a hotel online, you don’t need to be presented with the same 2000 options that everyone else gets, prioritized by which brand is paying the highest commissions, or by the ratings of travelers who have nothing in common with you. It’s a waste of time. Baarb is taking the pain out of booking hotels by prioritizing the results that are most relevant to you for the type of trip you're taking, and eliminating the noise.”
“Artificial intelligence is transforming every aspect of our lives, but we’re sitting on tons of data that isn’t being used yet to improve the traveler experience.”
Research confirms this:
• Consumers visit 38 sites before booking -Traveler Attribution Study conducted by Expedia Media Solutions (Expedia, May 2015).
• Conversion rates on hotel websites are usually between 2-3%, and 95% of visitors that initiate a booking will abandon (Hospitality Times, Jan. 2014).
• Baarb’s own research shows that 96% of travelers are looking for improvement in the hotel booking sites they use.
Recent quotes from other industry veterans suggest that Baarb is solving an industry-wide problem:
Trivago CEO Rolf Schrömgens says: "I think there is a major problem unsolved, and that is getting you into the ideal hotel. I don’t think that is happening right now. There is a huge value that can be unlocked.” (CNBC, Dec 2016).
Travel writer Nikki Ekstein says: “Booking travel feels old-school, no matter how you spin it: Such sites as Expedia and Orbitz have barely updated their layouts since 1999, and dialing a travel agent hardly feels appropriate in the age of Uber.” (Bloomberg, June 2016).
Carlson Wagonlit Travel president and CEO Kurt Ekert says: “Personalization is the absolute keyword.” (Star Tribune, May 2017).
How Baarb works:
Using a text bar that asks “What else is important to you”, Baarb searches millions of data points found in hotel descriptions and images to identify the best properties for your trip, and prioritizes them first in your search results. You can also search using one of the pre-defined Model Profiles that contain clusters of preferences most common for several types of trips, or create your own Profiles for custom searches.
Baarb tracks your actions on the site, including the use of "Like" and "Don’t Like" buttons that signal whether you want to see more or less hotels like this one in the future. The results improve over time and Baarb can make suggestions based on your history, and what others like you have liked.
Baarb’s current partners are Priceline and Amadeus. Baarb expects to announce new partners and features in the coming months, including a B2B product that will allow other booking sites to leverage the personalization technology for their customers.
Founder:
Baarb is the brainchild of entrepreneur and global traveler Barbara Parshall. Barbara was featured in the Huffington Post as one of Four Female Entrepreneurs to Keep an Eye on in 2017. She has also been featured recently in Entrepreneur, TNW, Startup Nation, Creator, and Social Media Today. In March 2017, Barbara was showcased by the Silicon Valley Forum’s Women in Tech Festival.
Baarb's mission:
Help people have more personalized travel experiences with the use of data and science.
Baarb’s demo video:
https://vimeo.com/204969549/0a2679683a
Baarb is currently accepting investments in an equity crowdfunding round. Visit https://www.crowdfunder.com/baarb.
Barbara Parshall, Baarb, Inc., http://baarb.com, +1 310-295-2665, [email protected]
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