I use this method and became converted after a long lived refactor branch caused merge hell, delayed a project for many months and caused all manner of bugs that we were fixing for a long time afterwards.
My very wise and experienced CTO said to me something along the lines of: "if you don't think it's possible to break a big refactor down into small steps, then you're probably not thinking hard enough". That has stuck with me.
Looking for a junior or mid-level React developer based in the UK to work as part of a fully remote team on a suite of health-related applications in the field of personalised diagnostics. Mostly very new or upcoming greenfield projects. We are a small start-up with a growing team and influential backers.
Our front-end apps are built with Next.js and run on Vercel. We are early-stage so loads of scope for making a major impact on the products we're building. You'd have some oversight from a senior developer but otherwise would be expected (and encouraged) to be very autonomous. Super relaxed and flexible working culture.
If you're interested or have questions you can email me directly: [email protected].
We do make money from booking commissions, but our commissions are much lower than those of the OTAs and more importantly go to a company that is trusted by and founded by the hotel industry.
Room Key's raison d'être is to lower the cost of hotel distribution for the hotel industry and to be an advocate for the traveler in what is a very confusing marketplace for the average consumer. Price confidence is severely lacking hence why consumers are often searching up to 6 sites before making a booking decision.
Very few people understand how the online hotel industry works and we would like to start to cast some light on that.
For rates that are available to everyone, the hotel chains are generally contractually restricted from offering a lower rate than the OTA. Currently the Priceline/Expedia duopoly wields a huge amount of power which IMO is ultimately bad for the consumer.
The way that hotel chains can undercut the OTA price is via their loyalty programs. If you sign up as a member then you can very often receive a lower rate. All the major chains have been running campaigns around these loyalty rates recently and one study has suggested it may be having an impact [https://www.kalibrilabs.com/press-1/2017/10/26/new-study-fro...].
Due to our unique relationship with the hotel chains, Room Key (both our .com site and Scout) is the only hotel search engine that has access to these loyalty rates across multiple chains. This is how Scout is able to notify the user of a better rate in so many cases for the big chains. We'd love to expand to have more hotels join us and allow us access to their loyalty rates as well.
We've found through our research and user testing that OTA users fall broadly into two camps. First, those who believe, rightly or wrongly, that the OTA rate is always going to be cheaper. Second, those who use OTAs as a search engine to find the right hotel but then go and manually compare the OTA rate vs the rates available directly on the hotel's own site.
Usually the direct deal is better when you consider the entire package - lower loyalty rate + easier cancellation + points + free wifi etc. Being the customer of the hotel who has an interest in the quality of your stay vs a third party does count for something. I believe we'll start to see that count for more as time goes on.
Nine months ago, an article "For Hotels, There’s No Room Left for Online Travel Agencies" sparked some interesting discussion on HN [1]. Many of the topics discussed informed the development of our new product, Scout.
The perception of many travelers is that the best hotel prices are to be found at the big online travel agencies.
The hotel chains have recently been attempting to alter this perception by offering lower prices when you book via their own websites. This usually requires membership in a loyalty program but they have streamlined sign-up so that you can become a member during the checkout process.
This channel shift is really important for the hotels because they lose so much in commission to the OTAs, not to mention market relevance and a direct relationship with the customer.
Room Key is a joint venture between six of the largest hotel chains in the world and has unique access to these lower direct rates.
We have just launched a new product called Scout, a Chrome browser extension that activates whenever you view a hotel at major OTAs.
Scout looks at the lowest rate being advertised by the OTA and then searches in the background to see if it can find a lower direct rate. If it does, it automatically displays a notification along with a button that takes the user to the hotel's own site to book the lower rate and get additional perks of booking direct (e.g. points, free wifi).
For now the hotels Scout works with are mostly limited to brands belonging to larger chains (Marriott, Hyatt, Wyndham, Choice, IHG). E.g. try looking at a Holiday Inn on Expedia and you're very likely to see a Scout notification.
The OTAs are currently limited to the major players (Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, Booking.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity) but we hope to grow this list to include metasearch engines (Kayak, Trivago, etc) in the near future. We also hope to introduce the extension on other browsers.
Room Key | Charlottesville, VA | Front-End Developer | Onsite
Room Key is a hotel search engine owned by six of the world's largest hotel companies. We provide access to member-only rates that other third party travel sites cannot.
We are developing and promoting our roomkey.com product. We expect several major features to be added this year. We are currently in the last stages of a migration from a legacy Backbone codebase to Preact/Redux/ES6.
To help us in these efforts, we are looking for an experienced Javascript engineer with a deep understanding of large-scale front-end web applications and a passion for good UI/UX. Any knowledge of Clojure(script) would be a major bonus.
We are a fast growing team with a great culture and working environment in the truly lovely city of Charlottesville, VA. We are only looking for on-site right now. We will cover your relocation costs.
It works this way for me. My credentials work for both .uk and .com although I only have Prime on .com. My order history is unique to the country site, but address book is the same for both.
Cyclist here. It's a different type of vehicle than a leg-powered bike and therefore not cheating at all... unless you're recording your rides on Strava, then it is.
More bikes is a very good thing, whether human or human/electric powered.
I agree with your comment about Austen's female protagonists. The article's author appears to have assumed that because Austen writes in the third person, equal weight can be given to she/he bi-grams. But, a writer can still internalize when using the third person and that could explain the differences much more than the gender of the subject.
It's very true that in terms of hotel booking many consumers still see the big OTAs as the "bargain" sites and are often surprised to find that you can usually get an equal or better rate by booking directly with a hotel chain itself.
The company I work for, roomkey.com, was founded by six of the largest hotel chains to address this problem and bring more direct bookings back to the chains. The OTA duopoly of Expedia and Priceline have many of the hotel chains over a barrel with very aggressive contract terms that do not allow the hotel chain to advertise a lower direct rate than those they supply to the OTAs. And added to this, the OTAs take a pretty eye-watering commission.
However, most of the big chains are able to provide a lower rate to their own loyalty members. Room Key is unique in that we can access and aggregate these lower rates into a one-search solution. But, we are a tiny voice and competing with annual online marketing budgets of over a billion dollars each for the big two OTAs. Our job is a very hard one.
I'm glad articles like this are starting to paint a truer picture for the consumer. It really does make sense to book direct almost every time. It's easier to cancel/modify. You are the customer of the hotel, not a third party. You get loyalty benefits. And more of your money goes to those who take on the overhead of your stay and ensure the quality of your experience.
The OTAs used to be both cheap and convenient. Now they can only really lay claim to convenience through aggregation, and we at roomkey.com are trying to change that too.
Room Key is looking for a software engineer with strong server-side web development experience - preferably with the Clojure programming language - to join our backend web development team in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Solve interesting problems! At scale! Using Clojure! Room Key's website regularly handles over 500,000 unique visitors per day.
Ideally you have:
- Phenomenal testing principles (and perseverance), incl. perhaps a grounding in basic stats
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills
- Willingness to fulfill multiple roles
- BS in Computer Science (but equivalent real-world experience is even better)
- Experience with Clojure or other functional programming languages
- Experience with several database types: object stores (redis), relational (postgres). Experience with Datomic a big plus.
- Experience with JVM-hosted development
- Experience with Amazon Web Services (the more the better) and Kafka
- Experience with GIS and spatial analysis
- 5+ years professional web experience
- Experience with service oriented architectures
- Demonstrated interest/experience in high performance, scalable systems
- Enthusiasm, team-contributor mindset and obsessive attention to detail
Don't be shy! If you are enthusiastic but only have a subset of our ideal qualifications, we still want to hear from you.
Please note:
No remote work is available and we cannot sponsor visas for overseas applicants.