What Chaago is.

Technically, it's an acronym that stands for Connecting Hotels and Guests Online. (Okay, so we threw in an extra "a" just for fun.) More precisely, Chaago is an online exchange that enables individual travelers and travel agents to get a great deal and personalize their hotel stay by connecting them DIRECTLY with hotels. Our goal is to enable hotels to sell more rooms while NEVER charging hotels any transaction commission.
Kind of a big deal, huh? We think so. In fact, we made that our slogan.

What Chaago isn't.

Let's be clear: We're NOT an online travel agency or "third-party provider" as those in the hotel business call it. We're completely free for travelers to take advantage of and incredibly inexpensive for hotels to use.
What's more, we don't sell hotel rooms. We simply allow people who are looking for hotel rooms (travelers, travel agents, meeting planners, etc.) to connect with hotels and then we leave the equation. From that point on, travelers and hotels iron out the details between the two of them.
That's it¡ªno hidden agenda. No commissions. Never.

What does Chaago think of the current online status quo in the travel industry?

Hmmm. Our mothers said if we don't have anything nice to say, not to say anything at all. So let's just put it this way: We created Chaago because we were more than a little frustrated with the way things work on major online travel agents' and third-party web sites.
There are hundreds of these sites out there, but they all use pretty much the same strategy: "Buy at wholesale and sell at retail." That forces hotels to sell rooms at prices that are unfairly low and travelers to pay prices that are unfairly high¡ªat least from our perspective.
We figured somewhere in the middle, there has to be a happy medium. And voila! After a couple years of testing, Chaago was born. Now we're working to build a community that's trusted by travelers and hotels alike. We hope you'll help us achieve that goal.

How we pay our bills.

Like we said, our service is free to travelers. As for hotels, we charge them a very nominal fee to use different features of our site. We offer hotels advertising opportunities and other promotional features and charge hotel pennies, which, translates to a fraction of what they'd pay via other current travel web sites.
Bottom line: By working with us, hotels don't have to mark up hotel rooms to cover the costs charged by other third-party web sites. And they can, in turn, pass the huge savings on to you.
But don't take our word for it. Submit a deal request to the hotels of your choice¡ªtell them what you want to pay and how you want your room to be, and then wait for them to respond. After you hear back from a few, pick the one that fits, contact them, and book your room.
You'll be happy. Hotels will be happy. And we'll be happy. In fact, pretty much everyone will be (except for those third-party guys).

Thanks for your support. And for helping spread the word about Chaago.