TheWaterRat

Aside from my own ventures, CityandOut and artandseek, for the last few months I have been working with and advising my friend Francesco and his partners on their awesome start up.
Sunny Solutions is bringing to the market two services that are not available (to our knowledge) anywhere else.
The first, Sunbrellaweb (http://sunbrellaweb.com/),  is a portal for beach resorts. Similarly to the way you have meta search and booking applications for hotels or restaurants, on Sunbrellaweb you’ll find thousands of beaches with the basic info, pictures and the services they offer. The system allows beach resort owners to create a microsite for their beach, shaped in the form of the real thing. Aside from pics and other information, the managers can lay out the umbrellas and beach chairs on the beach shape and make them available for online booking. They can allocate prices depending on season and availability. The system is a de facto beach management system.
Beach goers can search the database, by area, name, type of services, etc., compare resorts and book their ‘place in the shade’. It’s all completely free for users of course and also for the resorts to create thei microsite. Sunbrellaweb takes a small commission for all completed booking transactions. There’s also an affiliate system for travel portals to integrate the beach search onto their own systems.

The second service, SunbrellaMobile, is, if possible, even more exciting. Sunny Solutions is the exclusive licensee of an international patent for a system made of the following components:
1) a small solar panel that can be mounted on top of standard beach umbrellas;
2) a device powered by the solar panel providing an electrical power source;
3) a terminal, powered by the device, enabling guests of the beach resorts to order food and drinks directly from under the umbrella;
4) a central server providing wireless access throughout the beach resort  via the terminal and via any wi-fi enabled phones, to the customized food & drink menu and to other services;
So, basically, either through the bespoke terminal provided under the umbrella or through their own smartphones, people can order food and drinks from the bar of beach resorts while sitting comfortably under the umbrella; later additional services can be developed.

All people we talk to, resort owners and users, love both ideas. We have delivered the first few umbrellas while we prepare for a large scale deployment for the 2010 summer season.

We’ve recently started fundraising and had some very positive meetings with follow ups scheduled, and more meetings already in the agenda.
If you are interested in the idea or know someone who might be, give us a shout; you can contact me on favale@sunnysolutions.it