Lightbulb
Ok, well since no one else is taking this blog by the reins, I figured I'll throw an idea out there to gather some inertia. What do you think about an online service that basically provided all of the comforts and benefits of a hotel front desk? It would provide services like dry cleaning, room service (in the form of take-out, probably), maid service, wake-up calls, etc. all at exorbitant hotel rates. You could call it frontdesk.com or concierge.com or something along those lines. Obviously areas of service would be limited, and extremely so at first, but with the internet causing more and more people to stay at home, this sort of multi-purpose service (which would have 1-click billing to make things all the more convinient) could really capitalize on laziness.
posted by SlickRicks at 6:20 AM |
4 comments
4 Comments:
That would be an interesting idea to undertake. I think that wake up calls would be a very easy thing to do. Now with cell phones and such, cheap long distance rates, we could just get an automated service that sets up the system and allows people to set up their calls, (even by the week) and then when they pick up the phone, a pre-recorded message would courteously wake the person up. With that service, we could also provide an online "to-do list" service where they can input important duties and whatever their tasks are for the day, they would get an email reminding them daily. We could organize it by homework, upcoming exams, birthdays etc. I am a bit weary about the dry cleaning and such because of failed attemtps at online grocery shopping such as webvan, and it would require a quite a bit of capital to start up. We could start it in an area like you said that would be high volume, NYC comes to mind, where most of the customers would have relatively high incomes and little time to do chores like dry-cleaning. Room service would be a bit harder to execute. I really like the wake-up call idea, we would need to be creative with revenue. The first thing that comes to mind is internet-advertising which is a very big industry right now and is projected to grow. With something like wake up calls and to do lists, we would be a substitute good for palm pilots. We could try to make it a bit more interactive, with daily jokes, riddles etc. And also set up a network so that people could see what their friends had to do for the day. (We could also set up to-do lists and wake up calls privately so it was out of public view). Let's build on this for a bit...
October 21, 2004 at 8:07 PM
As far as the room service idea is concerned, I wasn't thinking of it in the true room service sense, but rather as more of a middleman delivery service kind of thing. On the website it would be called room service, but it would end up being something along the lines of a "takeout taxi" or one of those services that deliver food from restaurants that don't normally deliver (e.g. CPK, local delis, Chipotle, In-N-Out, etc.).
Another basic tenet of this idea would be that we'd try to negotiate group/bulk rates with whatever other services we employ. For example, if we were to include a repair/plumbing/electrician sort of service, we'd be able to hire from one company and maybe get a group rate, which we would then be able to pass some of those savings down to the customers, thereby giving them an incentive to use us.
October 22, 2004 at 6:50 AM
You're going to have to explain some of that stuff a bit more thoroughly, I'm not sure if i copy you.
October 22, 2004 at 4:36 PM
Ok, to clarify: Room service would basically involve us partnering with some local services that take a percentage to deliver (one brand is take-out taxi). These people take orders for restaurants that don't normally deliver but can get food to go. These services then deliver the food with a % earned for delivering, in addition to the driver getting a tip. I'd suggest we partner with these local services until we get big enough to have our own drivers as part of that service.
As to the second paragraph, I was saying that at some point we could offer services like 24 hour plumbing, electricians, and general repairs (like a landlord would provide), but we would have so many clients that we could achieve some economies of scale and make those rates actually attractive and at a comprable level for the normal market, thereby giving people a reason to use us over the standard market. Anything else need clarification?
October 24, 2004 at 5:10 PM
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