Simon Squibb

So they were so proud to tell the guest who was calling for a room, this is before the internet, your listeners might not remember this, people used to ring hotels.

So this is a long time ago.

Put the phone down.

And then I said, why did we just hang up on that customer?

We could have got their details.

Maybe next time we can tell them if we've got a promotion.

And the receptionist was, well, you know, this is what we just would fill up.

We haven't got time to deal with it.

We've got guests checking in.

So I came up with an idea of something called Accommodation Express.

where people could ring up the hotel that was full and we divert them to a telephone number that would find them a hotel in the nearby facility.

And we get 15% commission for booking that room.

So it was the inquiry wouldn't be wasted.

And I started my second business, Accommodation Express.

But basically once that entrepreneur muscle had been woken up in my brain, I found it very hard to accept a salary and be told what to do.

And so I started a second business called Accommodation Express and this did work.

This made me, in my mind at that time, proper money.

I made £80,000, which at the time was a huge, huge sum of money for me.

And I managed to make a business work.

And so I actually had the early days of hotel.com.