Is there no end to the growth of online companies offering daily-deal discounts? At first, there was only Groupon; but its business model was all too easy to clone. First out of the pack came Living Social which recently signed a $175m deal with Amazon. Then came wowcher, KGBDeals and others. There’s even a local one, “Today’s Great Deal” aimed at the moment at people in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Most people appear to use these services only for local deals. They’re great for getting discounts in restaurants or hairdressers, health clubs, car valet services even pole dancing classes. But it helps to start being inventive in how you use them. Where Groupon scores over its rivals is its presence in so many markets: it currently has a presence in 42 countries.
That allows it to offer better national or international deals. It recently offered a holiday in Tenerife from three to seven nights (£99 for the 3 night deal; £199 for 7) for up to four people in a one bedroom apartment at the Santa Barbara Golf and Ocean Club, with a bottle of champagne in your room on arrival. There have also been similar offers in Marrakesh, the Algarve and Berlin.
It was a Berlin deal that attracted our attention – two nights in the Art’Otel. This is part of a chain of specialist hotels owned by Park Plaza. It boasts that each establishment is a gallery in its own right with works by Andy Warhol, Wolf Vostell and other reasonably contemporary artists on the walls of bedrooms, lobbies and restaurants.
By one of those quirks of fate, Ryanair (the only airline to fly direct from Edinburgh to Berlin – and not a distant one either) was offering heavily discounted seats on the service at the same time. However, they only fly on a Tuesday and Thursday which left three nights to fill if the trip was to be really worthwhile.
Again, Groupon came to the rescue. This time, it was an offer to use the hotel booking service, Alpharooms. Book with them and get £50 off your bill. Given that they already advertise rooms at heavily discounted prices, well below the rack rate, this seemed a really good deal. Thus we found ourselves staying the extra nights at the Best Western Euro Hotel on the other side of the city.
That however was just the start. As already explained, Groupon has a significant international presence including many European countries. So we decided to join its German service (groupon.de) so what offers we could find in Berlin. You might find the thought intimidating: but if you use Google Chrome, it offers to translate the pages automatically.
We left home with four meals, a boat trip in the River Spree and a museum pass. With the exception of two meals, there was no need to pre-book. Just turn up, hand over the voucher (Gutschein in German) and enjoy the venue or the food. For the others, booking was necessary but the staff at both had an excellent command of English, much better than our German.
Having some knowledge of German however is very helpful. For those with not even school German, the Introduction to German from the late Michel Thomas is incredibly good – no learning lists of words, grammar or even writing things down. But it changes the mood of your German hosts very quickly. We’d been warned that they could be positively hostile to the British but make the initial approach in German and it’s all smiles and helpfulness.
The downside of buying some deals in a foreign country is that the boat trip, for instance, didn’t have an English commentary. But the meal deals were worth every eurocent. The CHIPPS No2 restaurant at the top of Friedrichstrasse was superb, with brilliant, fusion food and excellent service from multi-lingual staff. The Uma Restaurant, again fusion food this time with a Japanese theme, was luxury itself, with a price to match.
So why would the art’otel, CHIPPS or the Uma Restaurant offer themselves through a daily deal? The hotel felt like a recent addition to the chain. While the rooms were well furbished, some of the public areas were still being worked on. While the staff were courteous and polite, they still seemed to be under training.
CHIPPS was quite open about it. The voucher stated that this was a new venture, the latest restaurant from “the legendary Cookie”. They were keen to attract custom from a local clientele but were delighted when people from other countries discovered them. It’s definitely worth the trip to find them.
All the evidence suggests that the public everywhere likes these daily deals, no matter who is offering them. There are believed to be hundreds of copy-cat, start-up companies all imitating Groupon. These competitors go under a variety of names – such as groupies or clones. But it’s hardly surprising that they’re trying to muscle in on the act. Groupon has over 60 million subscribers, over $1 billion in venture capital and $750+ million in annual revenue. It’s believed to be the fastest-growing Web business ever.
Some of the others don’t have the financial backing but, as mentioned above, LivingSocial has done a deal with Amazon. Facebook is thought to be looking at adding this kind of service to its existing offering and Google, which offered $6bn for Groupon only to be turned down, hasn’t taken the rejection well. It’s likely to include daily deals as part of its new Google+ social media offering.
What that means is that competition is likely to become more intense. There’s likely to be blood on the floor as some of the weaker players go to the wall. But for the consumer, it’s likely to mean good news with bargains galore both at home and abroad.
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