Ever heard of Hotel Haggle?

HotelHaggle.com, a new site that lets consumers negotiate hotel prices, has been launched.

Launched by Ronan Carr, an entrepreneur based in Cork, Ireland, the company says its site’s value lies in the consumer-driven travel itinerary and the consumer-tailored results. Rather than putting the burden of finding a hotel bargain squarely on the shoulders of the consumer, HotelHaggle creates a collaborative approach to finding the best deal.

Users create an account, log in, share the details of their travel itinerary and the price they are willing to pay for lodging. HotelHaggle’s software filters the results, contacts the appropriate hotels and then puts the user’s business up for ‘bid.’ The resulting list of hotels that meet the location, schedule and price parameters is supplied back to the user for final decision and online booking.

The site says it offers a safe environment for confrontation-free bargaining and puts the customer back in the driver’s seat. Hotels in turn, enjoy a broader reach, receive valuable insight on consumer priorities and can book unsold rooms at an acceptable rate.

The site says it is possible to save anywhere up to 70% on a single hotel stay, with some bidding as low as $20 per room.

HotelHaggle.com will focus solely on hotels in the beginning, but will soon expand to include B&B listings, vacation rentals and timeshares. There are more than 120,000 hotels in the HotelHaggle.com database, according to the company.

www.eyefortravel.com reported on this yesterday, could be a great way for customers to save money on their hotel bookings, but more interestingly for the industry its a very innovative way for hotels to reduce distressed inventory!

Expedia to Launch Loyalty Programme

Hotelchatter.com have just covered the fact that Expedia are moving away from just offering Thank you points and are developed a specific loyalty programme, interesting development! Below is the Hotel Chatter article…

Expedia to Launch Their Own Loyalty Program in Early 2011

Currently, Expedia is linked up with Citigroup’s ThankYou network which allows you to earn ThankYou points for your bookings as well as use ThankYou points to make your bookings. (ThankYou points can also be used/earned for other things aside from travel.) But Expedia is terminating that relationship on December 1.

Fortunately, your hard-earned ThankYou points will still be valid after this date but you can only earn ThankYou points on Expedia until December 1st. If you have a Citigroup credit card, you can still use the ThankYou network on Expedia to earn points but instead of three points for every dollar, you will only get two.

Expedia is now promising to roll out their new program in early 2011 which has us excited but also a teensy bit concerned

But we’re also concerned because it looks like there will be at least a month where you won’t earn anything for your Expedia bookings. (Remember, ThankYou is dunzo on Expedia after Dec. 1 but the new program doesn’t start ’til early 2011. Again, Citigroup credit card holders are the exception.)

The FAQ section on Expedia about the changes is pretty comprehensive but as for whether your existing Expedia ThankYou points will be worked into the new Expedia loyalty program, Expedia doesn’t have an answer for that just yet.