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Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

press.airbnb.com

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Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#21

Post by Alex3917 »

Fuck hotel tonight, they're not even a real business and they're just scamming people out of money. They hide their mandatory "resort fees" underneath the Pay button so that it's not visible on screen, and those fees aren't included in any of the prices that are either shown initially or are visible on payment screen (room rate, taxes & fees, or total).

You can see how this works in this video I made here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdrFYb4otTs

The entire app is designed to trick people about what the actual prices are. The founder is a total scumbag and belongs in prison.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#22

Post by eiopa »

randomacct3847 wrote: post #2

pretty interesting. My hypothesis is that there’s a large cohort of people (myself included) who hesitate to use airbnb because there is still a real issue of inconsistency with back and forth with host, key hand off, etc that people who are attracted to hoteltonight (extremely last minute bookings) would hate and that airbnb is trying to figure out how to appeal to that base.

My personal experience with Airbnb is that they simply don't know how to do support. Even basic issues take multiple days to resolve, and usually involve many phone calls.

HotelTonight has been awesome there. You can get a representative on live chat and resolve most issues while you're still en-route from the airport.

On one hand, I am hopeful Airbnb will be able to learn from HotelTonight, but in reality, it seems most acquisitions end up with the acquired company diffusing into nothingness :(

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#23

Post by louisswiss »

This makes a lot of sense.

I travel a lot for work (100+ nights per year).

Sometimes I stay for 2+ nights, often it's just a 1-night stop over.

For 2+ nights, I almost always go with an AirBnB - more space to cook/work/think etc.

For 1 night though, AirBnBs are too much hassle. I don't want to have to choose a great location from a long list which includes some terrible options. I just want a clean bed, bathroom and decent wifi in a good location. HotelTonight gets me that in under 30s.

I'm not sure how AirBnB locations can/will be built into HotelTonight - after all HotelTonight is all about ease of use, low friction and flexibility. The very things AirBnBs are bad at (coordinating check in times etc).

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#24

Post by vegannet »

the_watcher wrote: post #8
randomacct3847 wrote: post #2

pretty interesting. My hypothesis is that there’s a large cohort of people (myself included) who hesitate to use airbnb because there is still a real issue of inconsistency with back and forth with host, key hand off, etc that people who are attracted to hoteltonight (extremely last minute bookings) would hate and that airbnb is trying to figure out how to appeal to that base.

Airbnb expanded their offering to hotels (including boutiques and bed and breakfasts). According to them, they're seeing strong growth in this segment[0], which is probably related to your hypothesis: there's a group who aren't comfortable with the home-sharing model (or people who simply like hotels) and they're finding ways to serve those people. The HotelTonight acquisition seems like it's a way to more rapidly sc…

Does this mean the next step is developers start building out brandless hotels that are a collection of individual investor owned rooms that are serviced and let through Airbnb. There’s already “invest in a hotel room” schemes (that are mostly fraudulent/garbage) so maybe this is an inevitability.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#25

Post by koboll »

linuxftw wrote: post #17
tudelo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I have used HotelTonight for day of booking and it had a better deal than I could get through any other location online for a very nice hotel.

By how much? I suspect they simply were operating at a loss to build up their brand. Jet.com did the same thing.

I've gotten $300-400 rooms for ~$120 several times. Nice boutique hotels in resort destinations, but at off-peak times of year.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#26

Post by jonknee »

linuxftw wrote: post #17
tudelo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I have used HotelTonight for day of booking and it had a better deal than I could get through any other location online for a very nice hotel.

By how much? I suspect they simply were operating at a loss to build up their brand. Jet.com did the same thing.

Well literally their entire pitch is that you book last minute and get savings. It would be weird if it wasn't at a discount...

I just pulled it up for Seattle and the Kimpton Monaco is up for $115, $140 after taxes and fees. From the Kimpton website it's $208 or $264 after taxes and fees. So about half off, pretty good deal! This was just the first one in the list, there may be better deals.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#28

Post by why-el »

randomacct3847 wrote: post #2

pretty interesting. My hypothesis is that there’s a large cohort of people (myself included) who hesitate to use airbnb because there is still a real issue of inconsistency with back and forth with host, key hand off, etc that people who are attracted to hoteltonight (extremely last minute bookings) would hate and that airbnb is trying to figure out how to appeal to that base.

It wouldn't surprise me if Airbnb moves to the hardware space pretty soon, trusting their long time hosts with say wall-mountable boxes that speak Airbnb APIs and can facilitates key exchange, door locking/unlocking based on timed codes, and so on. Heck, build one and Airbnb will most likely buy it from you. ;)

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#29

Post by nikanj »

Alex3917 wrote: post #21

Fuck hotel tonight, they're not even a real business and they're just scamming people out of money. They hide their mandatory "resort fees" underneath the Pay button so that it's not visible on screen, and those fees aren't included in any of the prices that are either shown initially or are visible on payment screen (room rate, taxes & fees, or total). You can see how this works in this video I made here: https://ww…

I’ve been burned by this on both hotels.com and hoteltonight. Show up at 11pm for your $89 room, learn about the mandatory $215 resort fee for the pool and gym you didn’t use.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#30

Post by jonknee »

Alex3917 wrote: post #21

Fuck hotel tonight, they're not even a real business and they're just scamming people out of money. They hide their mandatory "resort fees" underneath the Pay button so that it's not visible on screen, and those fees aren't included in any of the prices that are either shown initially or are visible on payment screen (room rate, taxes & fees, or total). You can see how this works in this video I made here: https://ww…

In prison? That's exactly how all hotel bookings work. I agree resort fees are a scam, but that's how it works and it's always charged directly by the property.
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