We want to know what you think!
Do you like this idea? How can we make it even better? Drop us a line - we would love to hear what you think! helpusgrow@thezouk.comHello, we're theZouk!
theZouk turns the tables and offers hotels a smart way to find and contact travelers with tailor made personal offers. It's hotels searching for clients, not the other way around. It's never been easier for travellers! Simply tell theZouk where and when you're going - and add your personal request in your own words. You're done in minutes, and your request goes out to all relevant hotels at your destination. Instead of tedious online fact finding, you create one request and then watch personalized, relevant offers roll in. We focus on the hotels and B&B’s that aren’t currently online. This is 80% of all hotels! Yes, that’s right – 8 out of 10 hotels (!) cannot be booked online which means they are not included in any of the traditional booking sites available today. That means - more choice for you!We open this previously inaccessible market to you and all other travellers who put transparency, real human contact and personalization before fast but automated and predefined prices from 3rd party intermediates. That’s a true win-win.
How it works
Everyone has their own expectations from a trip. In theZouk, you just select the options that are important to YOU and then add any personal requests you may have - in your own words. It’s much faster and easier than browsing traditional booking sites. We notify all hotels at your destination. The ones that are interested in having you as a guest will reach out to you through theZouk: Tailor made offers will start to arrive one by one, with personal comments, directly from providers who make that invaluable extra effort to provide exactly what you’re looking for.Once you find the offer you want, you simply click “Accept” and pay for your stay. Your money will be held in escrow and will only be released to the hotel after you have checked in and can confirm that you are getting what you paid for. Depending on the cancellation terms of the offer you accepted, you will get your money back in case you need to cancel your booking in advance.
This way theZouk keeps both parties safe.
How theZouk started
We’ve been working on theZouk for several years and tested the concept with a pilot that delivered 20.000 (!) tailor made personal offers to 6.000 travellers - without spending any money on marketing whatsoever. Imagine what will happen when we tell the world we’re here! Armed with all the feed-back and knowledge from the pilot, we’re now in Beta, ready to launch in our first traveller market - Scandinavia. This first version is (deliberately) quite basic and does not contain all the smart features we have lined up for theZouk - we know we’ll be tweaking and twisting the concept some more here in the beginning before we’re ready to grow internationally. At this point we focus on selected Scandinavian traveller segments going to selected destinations around the Mediterranean in order to be able to control the number of requests and hotels participating. We want to be able to communicate with all travellers and hotels using the system at this point, in order to fully understand what’s happening and why. As we move forward we will expand into new markets one by one, constantly delivering a sharper and more enhanced experience to both travellers and hotels.theZouk has been named “One of the best new innovations in the Travel Industry” at the world’s largest Travel Fair World Travel Market in London, we have vetted our business plan through “Språngbrädan” @ Connect Väst (Business Region Göteborg) and most recently participated in Chalmers Ventures Startup Camp in order to fine tune our approach to the market.
The name comes from Souk – an old Arabic word for marketplace.