With ubid4rooms.com, people are able to bid on unoccupied rooms or immediately take up last minute rates available in a 14-day window.

Managing Director Gary Berman says his site enables people to make a confidential bid for a vacant room and have an answer back within three hours, depending on how much the hotel is willing to accept.

The prices listed are the last minute advertised prices. You can either book immediately using these prices, which are similar to all other last minute rates, or you can make a lesser bid, saying how much you are willing to pay for the hotel room, which has to be at least 50 per cent of the advertised rate.

“It’s like eBay for the tourism industry, except it is not a competitive bidding process,’’ he said.

“Travellers can lodge bids with up to three hotels at one time and once a bid is accepted the others will be automatically deleted.’’

He believes while the online booking market is flourishing and forecast to represent close to 20 per cent in accommodation sales by 2011, the “value proposition’’ of the sites had diminished.

Ubid4rooms’ research suggests in most cases last minute style sites are offering rates that are equal to, or more expensive, than those being offered by hotels directly.

Berman says the accommodation industry has on average some 60,000 rooms sitting vacant throughout Australia each night.

So increasing the number of people undertaking “spontaneous travel’’ will generate more demand for rooms.

The bidding concept has already been used internationally, where people bid on a mystery hotel product.

In the UK, RoomAuction.com has generated STG1 million ($2.27 million) in its first four years while Priceline.com in the US has posted $US3 billion ($3.3 billion) in bookings.

But the difference with Ubid4rooms is that consumers can choose the hotel they want to stay in rather than bid on a mystery hotel.

Berman, who has over 20 years experience in the hospitality industry, developed the concept based on the philosophy he used while managing hotels. “I have a passionate belief that a room vacant for a night is revenue lost forever, and a property only has a limited supply, so this revenue cannot be made up in the future,’’ he says.