Business to help fans find rooms
FOOTBALL fans hoping to find a place to stay in Cardiff for the Champions League final will probably be out of luck – the hotels were booked up months ago and if they are lucky to find a room somewhere, it’s likely to cost them an arm and a leg.
But two Cardiff-based entrepreneurs have been inspired to help and have set up their a business which will help people find rooms at the Uefa Champions League final and other major events around the world.
Now they are aiming to become the “world’s largest virtual hotel”.
Fabrizio Gulino, 23, and Aadil Mukhtar, 28, realised they could capitalise on the value of their Cardiff city centre flat, providing accommodation to football fans for more than £1,000 a night.
They saw the supply and demand for hotel rooms for the final in June had gone mad. They made £3,500 from a three-night let for their flat and thought there would be others who will want to do the same.
The friends invested the earnings from their letting into BedSurge. com, an online letting agency that seeks out surges in demand for properties worldwide and then seeks to attract more properties onto the market, using marketing ranging from door to door knocking to Facebook advertising.
Mr Mukhtar, a former product consultant at Google, uses his knowledge of dynamic pricing to place the properties in blocks, replicating a hotel’s ability to maximise returns as demand increases.
“Basically, if the stock we have available is selling quickly, our technology can calculate the data to work out the true value of the owners’ living space, thus optimising the benefit to householders who have given us access to their homes,” he said.
“An individual can’t do this acting alone. This is why our proposition is unique – we achieve the critical mass of properties necessary for dynamic pricing.”
He added: “While the property owners get to sit back and relax during the event, we handle everything from access to the residence to providing the upscale hotel equivalent customer service and insurance protection.”
BedSurge.com is encouraging tenants and landlords to sign up.
Mr Gulino, a Sicilian native who has extensive experience in the hospitality industry, will focus on the customer experience aspect while Mr Mikhtar, who earned an MBA at Cardiff University, is the techie brain behind the venture.
The pair hope to secure 400 extra properties to alleviate the overwhelming demand for accommodation during one of Europe’s biggest football extravaganzas.
“I realised what we needed to do, we had to create a hotel-like experience for both the property owners and the travellers,” said Mr Gulino.
“For example, we have a deal with a hotel linen provider so that the guest experience can be as close as possible to staying in an upscale hotel. To get more properties on to the market when a surge occurs we need householders to give up their family home, we make that easy and profitable. It’s a niche nobody else is focused on, encouraging families to sublet properties when prices are crazily high.”
When the final guests leave Cardiff on June 4, the focus will shift to when and where the next lucrative peak in hotel prices will occur worldwide.
They say a Gulf-based financier has already expressed interest in investing in the new venture.
Mr Gulino added: “This business is driven by simple arithmetic. The Principality stadium holds close to 75,000 spectators while we have a little over 5,000 hotel rooms [in Cardiff].”