Alexander’s Blog – The Making of LetMeGo

A few months ago, I asked you to help us select the voice that would narrate the introductory video explaining LetMeGo to lodging staff members. Thanks to your help, we selected a great voice-over talent.

I have come to ask a very similar favor, but this time the stakes are greater: we need to select the voice who will narrate our intro video directed at travelers. This video will be featured on the home page of LetMeGo. Thousands and thousands of people will watch it (well, that’s the plan, at least). The video is designed to convince travelers that LetMeGo is the perfect place for them to find the ideal lodging at the right price.

We have posted a project in Voice123.com, and have received a number of auditions from voice talents there. Would you listen to the best auditions we received, and let us know which voice you like the most? You can simply post the name of the talent(s) you like as a comment to this post.

Please click here to listen to the auditions.

Thank you!

Alexander Torrenegra

The travel industry is used to the words “hotels”, “vacation rentals”, and “bed and breakfasts”. Some people have asked, for good reason, why LetMeGo uses the uncommon word “lodgings” instead. There are two explanations:

Explanation Number 1:

An urban legend I have heard attributes this odd choice to my place of birth: given that my native language is Spanish, not English, some people assumed that I looked for the word “hoteles” in the Spanish-to-English dictionary and, out of confusion and randomness, picked “lodgings” as the best translation. This being the Internet, where no rumor is too outlandish to die, you are of course free to believe this version…

Explanation Number 2:

LetMeGo is, arguably, the first online travel agency that allows travelers to seamlessly compare all types of lodgings: hotels, motels, resorts, vacation rentals, bed and breakfasts, guest houses, etc. Even hostels! As such, we came up with three options for the slogan:

“Let lodgings bid for your stay”

“Let accommodations bid for your stay”

“Let hotels, motels, resorts, vacation rentals, b&bs, guest houses, and even hotels; bid for your stay”

Brett, our professional, U.S.-native copy writer and marketing consultant, and I decided to go with the words “lodgings”. Thank you Brett!

Alexander Torrenegra

P.S. The same confusion happens in Spanish. The word “alojamientos” (Spanish for “lodgings”) is not common. The slogan of the Spanish version of LetMeGo will also use the word and, probably, the person in charge will have to write a similar post explaining the rationale.

I haven’t posted any “scope”-related updates in some time, so just to make sure we’re all on the same page, the term refers to an area of the Merrcury Engine (the software behind LetMeGo) that is responsible for some important process in the system. It has nothing whatsoever to do with either mouthwash or submarines, if that ’s what you were thinking.

The Mastrropiero Scope is in charge of ensuring that travelers who are submitting an itinerary will be able to quickly and easily review the lodgings that will be invited to bid. We hate systems that take a lot of time to display search results (which is, unfortunately, the norm for most online travel agencies and aggregators). We demand nothing short of blazing speed.

In order to provide results as quickly as possible, our team member German, who is in charge of developing this scope, implemented a database that is highly de-normalized, containing many binary indexes that represent the hundreds of different attributes that a lodging may have. Fortunately, German reads binary indexes the same way that Neo reads the Matrix. For those who weren’t lost at “de-normalized” (or maybe “binary indexes”), you may find some similarities between this and OLAP cubes.

By the way, Mastrropiero is a fictitious musician created by Let Luthiers, an awesome Spanish-language comedy troupe.

So, to wrap up, I am happy to announce that this scope is ready to go live. Thank you German!

Alexander Torrenegra

P.S. Here is the current status of all the subsystems and scopes required for the release of our private beta:

Progress of the Merrcury Engine
Scope	Status
Web Subsystem	Ready for the private beta!
Morrison Subsystem	Ready for the private beta!
Cockerr Subsystem	Ready for the private beta!
Hendrrix Scope (account management)	98% of QA for the private beta
Sinatrra Scope (lodging listing management)	95% of coding and QA for the private beta
Arrmstrong Scope (destination management)	95% of QA for the private beta
Rrose Scope (this one is a secret)	Ready for the private beta!
Charrly Scope (email campaign management)	Ready for the private beta!
Mozarrt Scope (conversation management)	90% of QA for private beta
Mastrropiero Scope (search management)	Ready for the private beta!
Kubrrick Scope (itinerary management)	95% of coding for the private beta
Brrown Scope (offer management)	95% of QA for private beta
Marrley Scope (booking management)	30% of QA for private beta