HN Explorer

Show HN: Kinsona – a hotel booking site that shows its cut on every booking (kinsona.com)

1 points by kinsona ↗ HN
Hotel for one night in Livonia, Michigan, and the three lines: room $54.53, platform fee $0.50, Kinsona fee $1.36. $1.86 is all Kinsona earns. This was a live test booking that got cancelled to ensure booking plumbing is working and refunds hit credit card. Still waiting for my first $1.86 as we refund everything within free cancellation window. My background is in healthcare pricing and it has taught me a lot about prices no one can see.

I created Kinsona (https://kinsona.com/) with an idea of showing hotel guests what the room costs, inclusive of taxes and payment processing, and Kinsona fees as itemized. Essentially, Cost-Plus model, where we charge a transparent fee at checkout. We do not know of any booking site that shows its cut. No packages to sell. Just hotels.

I built it all alone (TanStack, Stripe) and I want to put this forward to see if this community can provide honest feedback on the experience and the idea.

I will appreciate if you can search your favorite hotel and compare the results with where you book your hotels today and tear down our pricing and interface. Would love your feedback on transparent Cost-Plus receipt.

Thanks All.

5 comments

[ 0.39 ms ] story [ 12.5 ms ] thread
bradknowles
Is there a way to try out the system, without actually doing the booking? And without joining?

I’m curious, but I’m not going to join yet another service just to try it out and see that I don’t like it.

It seems to me like you should integrate the booking and joining phases. The process of doing the booking also automatically signs you up as a member.

kinsona
Thank you for being the first to comment. You are right, sign-in is a real barrier. Hotel price come with some very stringent rules that make smaller players like Kinsona park their prices behind firewall. This is not my choice. I will be happy to add a sample link to a receipt. In that way, you can see the idea without joining. The sign-in right now takes about 30 sec and I can try to make it as quick as possible.
bradknowles
I want to test a hotel where I know exactly what was on offer, where it was, and how much it cost me. So, a sample from your archive isn’t going to help.
kinsona
Tell me the date, hotel, room type and any cancellation conditions. I am just curious. I can do some initial check.