HallStreet, a startup which launched about three years ago as a marketplace to resell hotel reservations, has changed direction towards an events serviced built around maps.
Founder and chief executive Alfredo Ouro said focusing on events made sense and admitted the hotel marketplace, which remains a feature on the site, concept had been difficult to scale.
He views the events marketplace as completely disorganised and wants HallStreet, (TLabs here), to be a website with information showing users what is available around them.
The service now enables leisure and business travellers to plan trips to events such as trade shows, weddings and festivals using content from a number of partners including restaurants.com, hotels.com and Ticketmaster.
While HallStreet was originally devised as B2C startup counting the likes of Priceline and Hotels.com among its competitors, it has now moved to include a metasearch element and is partnering with accommodation giants.
The service also now allows users to create their own maps based around a particular event and share it via social networks. Users can also make money from their maps via a revenue sharing model which pays when another user books something via the map.
Ouro says it now ‘connects the dots’ from its original model.
To date the company has raised Euro 1.2 million from angel investors and has bases in Barcelona and San Francisco.
