Kevin Moreno, 24, got the idea for Hüsto — the recently launched hotel booking website — from listening to his father rant about his travel frustrations.
"He's always told me ever since I was probably 5 years old that any good business has formed around a problem," Moreno said.
(Yes, Kevin Moreno's father is Bernie Moreno, the Cleveland-area auto dealer and tech entrepreneur.)
Editor’s note: This story is part of Cleveland Inno’s Under 25 program, a platform to recognize rising innovators under the age of 25 who are making big moves with their companies across Northeast Ohio.
As a freshman at the University of Michigan, Kevin Moreno did some research on online travel agencies.
"I found that it was actually the hotels and the airlines — so the suppliers of the industry — that were much more vocal about the problems than even the customers," Moreno said.
That got Moreno thinking: "There has to be some sort of win-win solution here where everybody can do a little bit better," he said.
So Moreno created Hüsto to be an easier, faster, more transparent way to book hotel rooms online.
For a $6 monthly subscription fee, Hüsto users can create an individualized account where they search for, price and book hotel rooms at discounted prices "in seconds rather than hours," the website states.
Hüsto usually saves users at least 20% on their hotel rates, compared to other booking sites such as Expedia and Priceline, Moreno said.
How?
"Our competitors ... charge large commissions" of between 15% and 30%, which the hotels (not the users) pay, Moreno said. So if a user pays $100 for a hotel room, the hotel gets about $70, he said.
"We don't charge any commissions," he said. "It's very simple. We just say, if the room costs $100, that's how much the user will pay."
Nonsubscribers also can use Hüsto, but they pay the standard (not the discounted) price for their hotel rooms, Moreno said.
Moreno has hired independent contractors to write code for his website, which connects to the back end of hotel partners' computer systems, he said.
"We should have around 250,000 hotels on the platform" and about 3,000 users by year-end, Moreno said.
Hüsto has raised about $440,000 from investors since July 2019, according to Crunchase.
