To be a vulture

There’s nothing particularly likeable about vultures.

But what would you do if you discovered a competitor had told its customers they would soon be shutting down?

There’s a slap-up-meal about to happen – are you sticking around for the feast?

Today we discovered that Q Book had told accommodation owners that the service would be closing in a matter of days.

So we searched Twitter for irate customers and found some. We set up a Google Adwords campaign on their brand name. We got some signups.

But then other competitors started getting involved in those same Twitter conversations.

The lions had joined the hyenas and vultures.

The feast was in full swing.

Unlike communication tools or sharing apps, online booking systems are a zero sum game. You don’t use two. One person’s gain is another person’s loss.

That makes acquisition harder, because you have to force the switch.

Not today.

No wonder there was little concern for the carcass; there was much to gain.

But I’ve been in Q Book’s position.

Where shutting up shop is the only option.

Where you must tell your customers, your team and your wife that you’ve failed.

It’s pretty miserable.

And there we were feasting on the misery.

Perhaps that’s just business.

Perhaps they’d have done the same to us.

Maybe so, but I hope they’d have too spared a thought for what was going on elsewhere. Best of luck to those guys and girls on as they focus on other things.

If you are a Q Book customer and you’d like to move to Inn Style, let us know and we’ll happily migrate all your content and help you with integrating our calendar widgets into your existing website.