RoomerTravel Review – Buy & Sell Nonrefundable Hotel Rooms

Roomer is a hotel booking website with a twist, they market themselves as a “marketplace to buy and sell nonrefundable hotel rooms“. If you’ve done any significant amount of travel, chances are you’ve booked a hotel room only to have plans change and been forced to abandon it. Some sites/chains have generous refunding policies, whilst others leave you with a room you can no longer use but still have to pay for.

This is where Roomer comes in, you can list your unused nonrefundable hotel rooms on their website for a discount. Other users looking to get a deal can browse the site looking for cut price hotel rooms that people no longer need or want.

Roomer facilities these deals by offering the platform, but they also do all of the necessary name changes that are required. At the moment Roomer charges sellers up to 15% of the price they sell a room for as a fee, there is no charge for listing a room that doesn’t sell and buyers simply pay the list price.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Cheap rooms on offer
• Ability to sell hotel rooms that would otherwise go unused

Cons

• Roomer doesn’t list hidden fees, such as resort fees
• Roomers cut of 15% is quite a lot when you consider that sellers are already discounting their rooms by up to 70%
• Selection of rooms with a deep discount is low
• Seem to stuff their search results with hotel rooms that aren’t listed by users and instead listed by the hotel companies themselves, these deals are usually low discount or no discount at all when compared to other hotel booking websites
• If purchasing rooms, you will not earn elite night stay credits or hotel loyalty points

My Experiences

So far I’ve only been on the booking side of this equation, I haven’t listed any hotel rooms for sale.

Experience One

When I first found out about Roomer, I was keen to try this new website so I looked for some rooms in Bangkok where I was staying at the time. I found a room I liked that was priced well so attempted to book it, unfortunately whenever I clicked the “book it” button I was redirected to the home page.

I thought this was an issue with the room I was trying to book, so I tried another room at a different hotel. Same problem. I tried several different browsers, my phone and two different computers and I had the same problem with all of them.

I finally contacted support, they responded in a fairly timely manner but were not able to get the problem fixed in a fast enough manner so I ended up booking elsewhere. This seemed to be more of a technical fault than anything else and something which they seemed to have fixed, but I thought it was worth sharing as I ended up wasting a lot of time on the site looking at rooms that weren’t bookable.

Experience two

I was committed to trying this service because I really liked the concept, so I waited until I got home and kept browsing “best deals” section of the website which lists the hotels with the biggest percentage discount. I found something nearby that was heavily discounted (70%+) and booked it. This time I had no problems booking, my $25 new member discount was automatically applied during checkout and there were no pesky added taxes or fees to the original rate listed.

I booked my room and exactly 48 minutes later I received confirmation from Roomer that my room was successfully booked and confirm. This meant that the name change they attempt when you book is successful, I’d heard horror stories of people waiting a day or two so I was happy to see my confirmation came through so quickly. I imagine how long it takes depends on the hotel they are dealing with.

When I arrived at the hotel, the check in process was a little different than usual

• They originally couldn’t finding my booking
• Receptionist found it fairly quickly and said “Oh, you’re checking in on behalf of <full name of the original booker>”.
• Receptionist then asked if I had the phone number and full address of the original booker. I said that I didn’t have it and she said “that’s fine, he can just give us that information later” (I was able to check out without providing this information).
• Receptionist then took a copy of my drivers license and requested my credit card to pre-authorize a charge in the event of any incidental charges (e.g mini bar purchases or me destroying the room). She did specifically mention that the room had been paid in full. All room on Roomer are presumably paid in full in advance, but I am unsure how they confirm this.

It was a slightly uncomfortable check in even though the receptionist was really nice because I was constantly waiting for there to be an issue with my booking. I think the more I book with Roomer, the more comfortable I’ll be that there are no hidden surprises.

I only checked in for a few hours because I’d prefer to stay at my own house during the Christmas break, but when I went to check out there were no issues. I gave the room key back, made a bit of small talk with the receptionist and then I was on my way. She did ask if the other guest (the original booker) was still planning on coming and I said no.

I’m still yet to have any experience selling a room, but I look forward to giving the service a try in the coming months.

Referral Program

Roomer offers a referral program. If you referrer one of your friends and they make a booking of $100 or more (excluding discounts/promotions) you will receive a $25 credit on Roomer. The person you refer will receive a $25 credit for signing up, which can be used irrespective of how little your booking is (e.g it could be applied to a $25 booking to make it free).

Unfortunately you can only earn up to a maximum of $100 in referral credits (e.g referring four people) which is a bit disappointing. Feel free to share your links in the comment, as I’ve already hit my limit. This promotion is due to end on January 1st, but it seems to be offered on a semi regularly basis.

Final Thoughts

I really like the concept of Roomer and can see it being useful in a number of different situations, for example:

• Lowering the cost of mattress runs for elite status by reselling the rooms
• Using your free night certificates for high value rooms, only to resell them giving you a nice cash bonus
• Reducing the cost of paid night stays at hotels you might not have normally choosen

The big problem I have with Roomer at the moment is that it’s so difficult to find the best deals for places and dates I want to go. I think this can be easily solved by introducing an alert feature, for example I know I want to go to Mexico in June. I’d be great if Roomer would automatically alert me to new rooms that were listed that are discounted by 50% or more, have a 4+ star rating on TripAdvisor and are listed for dates in June.

That way I could book refundable rooms, hope that something pops up on Roomer and book through them for a big discount and cancel my previous room. At the moment I’m stuck trawling through rooms in Europe and checking every few days because the best deals get snapped up quickly.

I think the 15% fee they are currently charging sellers is too high as well. I know most hotel booking websites charge around 18% to hotels directly, but when you’re asking regular people that have already spent a high amount on a room to discount it by 70% and then slapping them with another 15% fee it’s a bit much. Although with that being said, most people are just happy to get something for selling their rooms.

Roomer is not something I’d recommend to everybody but overall it was a positive experience as I paid $40 ($15 after using my $25 sign up bonus) for a four star hotel room that usually costs $140-$150 per night.

How popular this site becomes will depend on how easily they can convince people to list nonrefundable rooms. If they can get decent inventory, this site will be a hit. Have you used Roomer before? What do you think of the concept? Let us know in the comments below.

You can also leave your referral links in the comments below. BUT you must have actually used roomer before and you must share your experiences with them with a mini review (at least 50 words) on what you thought. I’m especially interested to hear from people who’ve sold rooms.