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Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

press.airbnb.com

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Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#51

Post by iooi »

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…

I use HT quite a bit. It used to be significantly cheaper 5 years ago since it was only last minute hotels. They've since expanded to work more similarly to other booking sites since you can book way in advance now.

You get decent discounts with their loyalty program, which doesn't work with points, but just tracks your spend on the platform and levels you up as you spend more.

I think a huge factor for me using it is their customer service. You can text them via the app over anything and they'll respond back pretty quick. You also get upgraded "concierge" service as you level up, though I didn't find this to be that much better.

I'm worried that AirBnb will ruin HT since they have such horrible customer service. Hopefully they don't. It's nice not planning your hotels far in advance, land in a city, and take it from there.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#52

Post by dymk »

Alex3917 wrote: post #36
jonknee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> that's how it works and it's always charged directly by the property. If the hotel wants to charge their own fee separate from the app then that's not a problem at all. The problem is the Hotel Tonight lying about what the prices are.

If hotels aren't disclosing these fees to HotelTonight, that's hardly HT's fault.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#53

Post by lotsofpulp »

kylemh wrote: post #43
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?

I've never actually found this to be true. I go through Kayak, and I always check the hotel directly just to be sure. I've done this 9 times in the last 4 months for Loew's, Ramada, Best Western, and Hilton.

If you actually have a better price, then at least these brands will give you discounts or points. I don't see why they wouldn't hardcode it into their systems to not allow a cheaper priced to be reserved unless via their direct non commissionable channels, seems like a pretty easy thing to prevent.

https://www.ihg.com/hotels/us/en/customer-care/lowest-intern...

https://hiltonworldwide3.hilton.com/en/best-price-guarantee/...

https://www.marriott.com/online-hotel-booking.mi

https://www.choicehotels.com/deals/best-rate

https://www.wyndhamhotels.com/wyndham/hotel-deals/best-rate-...

https://www.hyatt.com/info/best-rate-guarantee

Edit: I'm going to have to retract my comments about cheapest price being on official hotel brand websites. I did a cursory search and find many cheaper options on Hotel Tonight (and expedia) for same day reservations than the brands, and while I haven't looked at all the brand's best price guarantees, at least IHG's exempts them from having to provide the lowest price within 24 hours of checkin, so it seems like a loophole to let them dump rooms for cheaper on third party websites day of arrival.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#54

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#55

Post by louisswiss »

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…

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 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

- No hidden charges

I'm not a person who is loyal to a brand by nature. But HotelTonight is the closest I've come to feeling that way so far.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#56

Post by ghaff »

eiopa wrote: post #22
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…

Or I book with a hotel directly and I (essentially) never have issues that require me to deal with the corporate support line. I realize I’m not as price sensitive as some but I mostly want to minimize lodging hassle when I travel.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#57

Post by untog »

why-el wrote: post #28
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. ;)

That stuff already exists, albeit in less advanced forms (a lock box with a number code, for example). If hosts aren't using them I'm not sure that adding another layer of technical whatevers on top of it is going to change anything.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#58

Post by kokokokoko »

lbotos wrote: post #39
louisswiss wrote: post #23

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…

> 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). I expect them to just show hotel tonight data in the airbnb interface. From the press release: > We are making it easier for people who use Airbnb to find last-minute places to stay when Home hosts…

I'm pretty sure AirBnB acquired HotelTonight so they can legally speculate about owning a much larger share of overall travel booking, including traditional hotels, on their S-1.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#59

Post by jonknee »

linuxftw wrote: post #46
jonknee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just compared this exact hotel for tonight on hoteltonight.com and hotels.com and travelocity.com Same price across all 3 sites. Chances are, if you see a price lower than the major travel sites, they're losing money. In this case, they're the same price.

Or chances are it really depends on where you are and if they have properties they have negotiated with vs general inventory that all the travel bookers use. Sometimes there are deals, sometimes there aren't.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#60

Post by tonyhb »

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…

Great. Used it for probably > 25 bookings. Super easy to use, super helpful staff, and it seems to be actually cheaper.

Agreed that points and benefits not being given sucks, but that's the case with any 3rd party. HT's loyalty definitely adds up, though.

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