The new free browser extension is set to shake up the travel industry. Introducing Cherry, the latest innovation in the travel industry for Aussies that love a deal.
The sweet free browser extension makes finding the best accommodation rate easy. Cherry acts as a digital booking concierge, sourcing the cheapest accommodation rate across any travel booking site. Using similar technology to the global success story Honey, Cherry knows when users are looking at a hotel, motel, resort or BB, and find better deals available, booking directly with the hotel via the extension.
Cherry was conceived and created in 2021 during Melbourne’s lockdown by local digital entrepreneurs, Matt Taylor and Luke Young, who are no strangers to the travel tech industry, having launched parent company and direct booking platform reZme- a custom-built, subscription-based software as a service SaaS platform for accommodation businesses in 2020.
With 54 percent of Australians planning to take a trip in 2022 and both domestic and international borders now open, the post-COVID travel boom is impending and the arrival of Cherry comes at the perfect time for both travellers and the industry. Cherry provides a unique two-sided value proposition unlike anything else in the market, set to revolutionise the booking experience by ensuring the best rates are only accessed directly with the hotel, benefitting both consumers and accommodation operators.
With the excessive number of booking sites currently available, booking accommodation today is far from an easy experience. It’s impossible to know if the price is shown, is the best price, plus every time a booking is made through a third-party site, the hotel loses a large chunk of revenue with costly commissions, sometimes as high as 30 percent of the reservation value.
Hotels want travellers to book direct, and are prepared to offer better deals than what is in the market to make this happen. We’ve built Cherry to make accessing these deals easy said Matt Taylor, CEO and co-founder. Compatible with Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge and Firefox, Cherry takes seconds to install and works in the background every time users search for accommodation options, on any booking site they visit.
The technology works by seeing if there is a better deal available by booking directly with the accommodation provider, and if so, the user is given a discount code and redirected to the hotel’s website to access the deal – it’s as simple as that. We’ve built Cherry to ensure hotels have an easy way to attract guests to book direct, and travellers have an easy way to access the best rates in the market, said Luke Young, COO and co-founder.
Officially launched on 14 March, thousands of hotels have already registered with Cherry to extend sweet deals to consumers that aren’t available anywhere else. Taylor and Young are looking to scale quickly, with the goal of a quarter of a million Australians using by year’s end, alongside rapid expansion into international markets over the coming months.
Written by: Matthew Thomas
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