Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 6th March 2009
2 COMMENTS 
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick
This post is part of a series of an informative posts about The Next Web Conference. The conference will be held on April 15, 16 and 17 in Amsterdam. 900 web influentials get together to do business, to be inspired and to have fun. Feel free to skip this post if you’re not interested.
You want to know where to sleep during your trip to The Next Web Conference? Well, we’ve picked a great hotel for our guests (and speakers) from abroad. As we only want the best for our guests we decided to test the hotel for you. We booked 3 rooms at Hotel V, called our girlfriends, packed our bags and hopped on our bikes (300 meters from our own houses) for a weekend Hotel V as tourists in our own city.
The hotel is situated in the center, no rephrase, the hart of Amsterdam. It is a new hotel with a cool lobby, some iMacs, free High Speed wifi in the lobby and all rooms, nice rooms (not super big though) and comfortable beds. For The Next Web we’ve blocked all rooms, so it is gonna be a fun place to be the place to be.
Ideal about the location is that it has great coffee bars, lunch places, restaurants and small shopping stores just around the corner (Utrechtsestraat is one of my favorite streets of Amsterdam). It is in a great neighborhood.
We’ve made a special deal with Hotel V for attendees of The Next Web.
Of course we can recommend other hotels, in any price category, as well, but in that case I can’t guarantee we’ve personally tested your bed.
Check out our video review of Hotel V.
Hosted by HotelVideoReviews.com
Written on 2nd March 2009
4 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
To launch tomorrow is HotelVideoReviews, a Dutch/US startup focusing on helping travel agencies benefit from hotel video reviews on their sites.
HotelVideoReviews aggregates video reviews from established hotel review sites including tripr.tv and hotels.tv as well as partnered travel agencies. See, the site offers white label solutions to travel agencies enabling them to create their own user generated reviews sections helping them receive more targeted leads.
There are no fees for moderation, integration or daily administration, however the site aims to share qualified leads and therefore profits with individual travel agencies – directly correlated to traffic linked back to their site. At launch they have partnered with leading Facebook travel application WhereiveBeen.com, EasyTobook.com, Gekko.com, and Hotels.nl.
CEO Jan Kooman is a firm believer in the benefits of video reviews:
“We believe that video reviews are very important for the booking experience on a travel website. Research shows that 78% of hotel bookers already use textual reviews when making travel related decisions. However 42% find video most trustworthy.
Adding video content on a hotel booking webpage increases conversions up to 200%. To stay competitive in online travel they are a must.”
Kooman is also joined by ex-Google country manager Marc Duijndam as an investment partner.
Written on 27th August 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
After six months in beta, the “YouTube for hotels”, Tripr.TV, has officially launched today. The Dutch start-up allows users to post video reviews of the hotels they’ve visited, promising a commission (averaging $10 per booking) when another user books via their video page.
Tripr.tv has recently been funded by Greenhouse Innovation, venture capital firm of Mr. Sander Andreae and Mr. Marc Duijndam. Duijndam is former managing director at Google and now works for eBuddy.
Jan Kooman, Tripr.TV CEO says in the release that his service gives potential guests a better idea of the hotel “Moving images are much more realistic than the, often outdated and glamorized, pictures which hotels themselves show. Our way, potential guests can really trust the hotel. When you’re filming for Tripr.tv, you’re actually walking around your room. Everyone can see the truth.”
I disagreed with Kooman when I first reviewed the site in January, and I still do. Sure, movies give a better idea of how a hotel looks like. But you got to remember that users will shoot mini-commercials, so that more potential guests will book via their video page.
Put those homemade movies in context
That doesn’t mean I consider Tripr.TV to be a failure. Far from that. I think the whole videotaping your hotel room thing is good way to structure user generated content. These hotel rooms movies would otherwise wind up as long forgotten YouTube movies and the creator wouldn’t make a penny from it.
So I say, more initiatives like Tripr.TV please. Put all those homemade movies in context, like YouPorn (Wiki link) did with sex videos and Tripr.TV with hotel videos. But just don’t claim it’s unbiased. There’s no such thing as one definite truth.
Written on 19th May 2008
11 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Update: By sending fax and email log files, Renée De Meo from Venere proved that it was actually the mistake of the Arcadia Hotel Belmondo.
For most web professionals, the Internet is like a religion. We evangelize the almost endless opportunities of the medium and try to convince people to trust new technologies. It almost sucks us up, and creates some sort of tunnel vision. So when a new technology lets us down, it hits us extra hard. It happened to my co-editor Patrick and me.
We traveled to Hamburg, Germany last Thursday to visit the one-day conference Next08. Right before we left, I booked a hotel via Venere.com. Quite last minute, but hey, we’re busy guys. Moreover, that’s where these services are for. I browsed around, looking for an affordable hotel within walking distance of the Next08 venue and ended up at the Arcadia Hotel Belmondo. When I completed the reservation, I was happily surprised with the confirmation message via SMS.
So after a rather tiring six-hour drive with traffic jams and without a navigation system, Patrick and me arrived at the hotel. A bit stressed, as we were late for the Facebook Developer Garage after party. Yet when we arrived at the reception, a nasty surprise was waiting for us. After a lot of shaking no with her head and desperate looks in our direction, the receptionist told us the hotel was fully booked and she couldn’t find our reservation. When I showed her the confirmation page on my MacBook, she told me that it should have been impossible for us to make a reservation on that very day, as she had closed the booking system in the morning.
There we were standing, two angry young men. Utterly disappointed in the so-beloved medium. In our anger, we decided to write a blog post titled: “when the Internet fails”. Apparently, the disappointment got to our head, as it wasn’t the fault of the medium. It was the fault of one of world’s largest booking sites, Venere. The technology didn’t fail, the people behind the technology did.
Our faith in the web was renewed when the receptionist gave us two WLAN access cards. Within five minutes, we found an excellent last minute offer from a design hotel called Arcotel Rubin. Two minutes later we booked the room on Hotels.com and ten minutes later we were checking into a very comfortable hotel.
So all you fellow technology evangelists out there. Next time you try to make people trust the web, use this story to explain that when new technology fails, it’s often the people and not the whole medium. That might sound familiar to them, as it’s often also the case with technologies that exist for decades. Explain to them that they can use a broad range of new super handy tools, with the same or less risk.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
