Service lets customers tweet for boutique hotel bargains

#Tweetstay is a travel agent for the Twitter age — acting as negotiator between consumers in need of a last minute room and independent hotels with beds to fill.

Since launching in 2013, the Stayful bargaining platform has been a place for customers to negotiate room rates for unsold spots at independent and boutique hotels. Their latest venture — #Tweetstay — now enables intimidated vacation-seekers to take a back seat and let Stayful do the bargaining for them — stepping up as the travel agent for the twitter age.

Customers simply tweet @Stayful an adapted version of the company’s template tweet, specifying where and when they want to go on vacation, how much they want to pay, and how long they will be visiting for. The Stayful team then negotiate with the best boutique hotels and reply via twitter with discounted offers. The company can only offer the service for trips in the upcoming month, as this is how the team acquires the lower prices — helping the independent hotels to fill unoccupied rooms. The service can currently accommodate requests for trips to 24 US cities including Los Angeles, New York City and Houston. Stayful can guarantee ‘better’ prices than consumers would find elsewhere online because they work directly with the hotels in real time.

We have already seen KLM Royal Dutch Airlines enable its customers to buy flights through social media platforms. Are there other services which could be transplanted to Twitter to ease customer interaction and benefit from added publicity?