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Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

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Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#191

Post by hrktb »

bertil wrote: post #176

It’s interesting that no one here, after 160 comments, is speculating about the impact to Booking.com B. is the 7th largest internet company in the world but because it’s in Amsterdam and not US based, hardly anyone think about them. They have incredible technology, often on-par with the big ones but I’m not anyone here could name one problem where they pionnered a solution. Disclaimer: I used to work for one of thei…

Booking.com has gone the other way, integrating private apartment rentals in their hotel listing. I’d imagine they saw it coming and as a customer they seem to be doing fine.

Also as they are one of the king of the hill, any move in the market is basically a move against them. For now at least I am not sure there will be that much impact.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#192

Post by hrktb »

aboutruby wrote: post #183
bertil wrote: post #176

It’s interesting that no one here, after 160 comments, is speculating about the impact to Booking.com B. is the 7th largest internet company in the world but because it’s in Amsterdam and not US based, hardly anyone think about them. They have incredible technology, often on-par with the big ones but I’m not anyone here could name one problem where they pionnered a solution. Disclaimer: I used to work for one of thei…

Completely disagree on the technology part, everything being written in Perl doesn't help and the user experience is not as good as Airbnb. The main thing going for them is that they have basically every hotel on their platform. And like others mentioned, that a lot of people prefer hotels to airbnbs.

I heard the integration part was mostly java. I’d guest they have both alive internaly, a bit like amazon at a time (?)

PS: dealing with hotels is playing with decades old technology. I think they’re doomed to keep a flexible and tried and true stack to deal with all the atrocities they’ll have to adjust to.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#193

Post by throwaway-1283 »

dpandya wrote: post #190
throwaway-1283 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree with this analogy. Hotels have their place, and in so many ways they can be superior to a home rental. I am the furthest thing from a luddite, but I personally prefer (as I know many others) hotels to Airbnb. There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays. I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is consider…

Whether or not a company is a "tech" company is kind of a muddled question, but taking even a brief glance at https://airbnb.io/ (their engineering blog) makes it clear that AirBnB does some pretty serious engineering. For example, their post about their work in search ranking is quite interesting [1]. [1]: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/machine-learning-power...

I'm not suggesting they don't have engineering challenges, but if you stack ranked the engineering challenges by difficulty across Airbnb, Uber/Lyft, Google, FB, Netflix, Amazon, Dropbox, Pinterest, etc. I don't see how Airbnb would not very easily rank last by a long shot.

Airbnb is basically just a prettier craigslist with a payment transfer mechanism and messaging. It isn't to say it isn't a great business, just that the "tech" part of it is not really much more than a web app.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#194

Post by drinkzima »

chrisseaton wrote: post #37
HeavenFox wrote: post #31

Those who have used HotelTonight, can you comment on your experience? For me, there have been several rare occasions when I needed a room at last minute, but HotelTonight was never actually cheaper than any other aggregators or booking directly with the hotel. All being equal I vastly prefer booking direct so I get my points and elite benefits. I guess they have a fancy interface, and that's... it? Maybe it's market…

> HotelTonight was never actually cheaper than any other aggregators or booking directly with the hotel I think every major hotel chain guarantees that their direct price is the lowest, and why wouldn't it be when there is no middleman, so why go anywhere else when you've found the hotel you want?

This is based on a concept called price parity, for which there are exceptions - including opaque rates, packaged bookings, and last minute / mobile. HotelTonight is able to fit inside those limitations when selling rooms last minute - so they are indeed often cheaper than other aggregators or booking direct.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#195

Post by gmanley »

wbronitsky wrote: post #123
princeofwands wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also scary considering that if Airbnb does not like you, for whatever valid or invalid reason, you are not welcome in either local hosting or hotels worldwide. Given that Airbnb already declined hosting people they considered attending a lawful political rally (the "hateful nazi's of Charlottesville"), their increased reach concerns me.

[flagged]

Either people agree with you or they're Nazis? Maybe you should rethink why you are getting downvotes. It may be more due to people thinking that companies acting as gate keepers or moral compasses can very much be a slippery slope and you simply saying it's not does not change that people think that.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#196

Post by louisswiss »

mrcodedude wrote: post #167
louisswiss wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it a lot (several times each month for the past ~3 years). I absolutely love it. - You can trust that the hotels are good enough. Never had a bad experience - Takes - They have their own rewards system which really starts to add up the more you use it - They may never give you the absolute cheapest option available in that city for that night, but you'll get an amazing deal on a higher-quality hotel - My experi…

"My experience using other booking sites for 'cheap deals' has been that you're often treated as a lower-tier customer, for example being given worse rooms (ground floor, no windows etc). The HotelTonight experience is the opposite. ~25% of the time, I receive a room upgrade without asking" They're all OTAs. You're just as likely to get a "good" room with HotelTonight as you would with Priceline, Hotwire, etc. The qu…

> You're just as likely to get a "good" room with HotelTonight as you would with Priceline, Hotwire, etc.

Can't speak for every hotel (obviously), but I know for a fact this isn't true for several.

Hotels always have better and worse rooms - it's very rare to have a building where there isn't a loud/dark/musty room or two.

In most hotels where I know a member of staff, they freely admit to having several 'worse' rooms which are given to booking.com/priceline etc guests first, regardless of availability.

They purposefully save a few 'better' rooms in case valued customers show up last minute. For some reason, HT customers get lumped into this category - maybe because it's assumed they have the purchasing power to become a 'real' customer in the future (but that's just a guess).

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#197

Post by Symbiote »

kdot wrote: post #168
snark42 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not because of what they'll do to the product, but I guarantee their partnerships with hotels and hotel groups will evaporate when contracts expire. I'm not sure. It may be harder to book future dates with HT after the contracts expire, but in my experience HT is most useful when AirBnB isn't (same day booking.) I'd imagine hotels probably like the last minute bookings. Also you can book at 1 or 2am when hotwire cu…

No, this was my biggest gripe. You can't book a room at 2AM and expect to get it that same night.

If it's this late, is there much point in booking?

I would just turn up. If it's possible it's going to be very busy, I might phone ahead first.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#198

Post by pastor_elm »

bertil wrote: post #176

It’s interesting that no one here, after 160 comments, is speculating about the impact to Booking.com B. is the 7th largest internet company in the world but because it’s in Amsterdam and not US based, hardly anyone think about them. They have incredible technology, often on-par with the big ones but I’m not anyone here could name one problem where they pionnered a solution. Disclaimer: I used to work for one of thei…

my favorite part about Booking is that it will tell me how many other people are currently looking at the last available room i'm looking it. Let's me know if i have to swoop it up quickly!

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#199

Post by chrisseaton »

rb808 wrote: post #88
chrisseaton wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HotelTonight was never actually cheaper than any other aggregators or booking directly with the hotel I think every major hotel chain guarantees that their direct price is the lowest, and why wouldn't it be when there is no middleman, so why go anywhere else when you've found the hotel you want?

> when you've found the hotel you want? that is the hard bit right? I guess you can showroom with expedia etc then book with the hotel direct.

Well if I'm travelling on business in a major western city realistically I'm only going to consider a handful of major brands, but yeah or look at aggregators then book directly, or at least check the price.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#200

Post by chx »

dpandya wrote: post #190
throwaway-1283 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree with this analogy. Hotels have their place, and in so many ways they can be superior to a home rental. I am the furthest thing from a luddite, but I personally prefer (as I know many others) hotels to Airbnb. There's a consistency to the hotel product that you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or last minute stays. I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is consider…

Whether or not a company is a "tech" company is kind of a muddled question, but taking even a brief glance at https://airbnb.io/ (their engineering blog) makes it clear that AirBnB does some pretty serious engineering. For example, their post about their work in search ranking is quite interesting [1]. [1]: https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/machine-learning-power...

> AirBnB does some pretty serious engineering.

They might but after all these years you still can't search for a room with a private bath despite the platform has the data and detail pages show it.

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