rezzline.com is an entirely new business model for handling hotel reservations on the web. Today’s dominant merchant model causes all kinds of problems for travelers, hoteliers, and even cities. The founders of Rezzline recognized these problems and sought to create a system which was better for everyone involved.

the work

The Rezzline story is actually quite interesting. I suggest reading the white paper for a full explanation of how this company's business model could be quite disruptive to reservations. Virtually ever traveler finds great "aha" moments in the paper as they recognize their own complaints against the current systems.

As for the programming, the project includes a vertical search engine site to search for properties, a self-signup and dashboard site for properties to create their listings, an admin site for Rezzline to monitor listings, payments, promo codes, sales reps, and more, an API signup and reference site, and a technical site for inventory providers to test the Rezzline protocols against.

We’ve proven the entire technology stack, and gained a great deal of acceptance for the model from industry insiders, and Rezzline is now seeking funding to continue develop and begin the full-scale sales process.

my role

I am one of the startup partners of Rezzline (as CTO if you need a title) and developed the original prototype B2C search site which has since been replaced by a production site developed by a team at ThoughtWorks which I directed. I developed the B2B site which hotels use to create their listings. I developed the backend Admin site which is used to review and approve listings, review payments, manage promotional codes, and other tasks. I also developed the core technology, protocols, and SDKs which connects the Rezzline search system real-time into the reservations inventories of hotels. I also wrote the company’s white paper, business plan, and PPM.

real time inventory access

The most interesting technical challenge for this site was solving how to acquire real time rates and availability from hotel properties. When you search on Rezzline and see a price, we have acquired that price right then and there directly from the hotel’s own inventory system. There are some existing data exchange patterns for reservations, but they’re largely designed for travel agents looking to get all information about one property at a time. These systems are too bulky and slow to work for a system like Rezzline. Rezzline needs to acquire a small amount of info for many hotels within a few seconds. No one had done this before.

After quite a few thought exercises and a few experiments of candidate approaches, I was able to hone in a model which would meet our needs. A combination of a very lightweight protocol, data packet, and asyncronous queries provided a suitable platform. After proving the system’s capabilities, I also developed an SDK which made it very quick for an inventory supplier to support the new protocol.

web projects:

Read more about specific projects I have worked on below. Each link takes you to a page about that project. Feel free to visit the sites as well.