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Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

press.airbnb.com

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Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#61

Post by goshx »

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 have the app installed for 2 years. I never got a room through them, but have tried every time I needed it. The rooms I ended up staying at were cheaper somewhere else.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#62

Post by clairity »

wurst_case wrote: post #38
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've used it several times to good effect. Got to stay in a decent room in Vegas when I was just passing through for 15 bucks. They offered it to me for a second night for 25. Ive also used it in LA, SF, bumfuck Arizona, etc. Each time I got better deals. But I used it to find hotels day of.

i've never gotten a deal that good but generally find hoteltonight to be 25-50% cheaper (assuming booking within 3 days of arrival). i've stayed many times in SF for less than $100/night at nice (but not extravagant) hotels.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#63

Post by jpalomaki »

tudelo wrote: post #6
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.

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.

I’ve been under the impression that some of the large sites force hotels to sign agreements, which prevent the hotel from giving better rates to other sites.

Found one article mentioning this [1].

Edit: but could be these don’t apply to last minute or same day reservation. Looks like for example Hotels.com best price guarantee excludes these.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/sep/15/australians-t...

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#64

Post by Joe-Z »

__alias wrote: post #27
redunculous5 wrote: post #14

Oh God no. I absolutely loathe Airbnb and will not book a property with them. Does this mean I can no longer use HotelTonight too?

Why do you loathe them?

Don't know the GP's intention, but coming from a small tourist-heavy city, it can really fuck with the local housing market and make an already dire situation even worse.

Also: What are the rules for flagging on HN? Can people not express opinions here?

For reference: GP was expressing worry that she can't use HotelTonight anymore because of not wanting to support AirBnb. Glad nobody needs to read that anymore...?

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#65

Post by 3into10power5 »

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?

Not true. I recently tried booking a flight on Cathay Pacific. Their price was $50 more than Kayak/Orbitz. I asked how come? They said, Kayak/Orbitz buy in bulk from Cathay Pacific so, they offer some discounts sometimes. For cathay pacific, they guaranteed income, whether or not tickets are sold.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#66

Post by Alex3917 »

dymk wrote: post #52
Alex3917 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They are disclosing them, HT isn't including them in the prices they're showing the users though. C.f. the video I posted. What you see before I start scrolling is the entire screen that's visible to the user, with the Apple Pay button at the very bottom.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#67

Post by mherdeg »

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 have only used them twice, both in 2016:

Booked a solid $134 room in Leicester Square at about 3pm same day. Went great.

Booked an $82 room at an EWR hotel, a little cheaper than other OTA rates including apaglobal. Went fine.

They seemed to have access to consolidator-style inventory at rates lower than I found in the markets where I was looking on the dates where I was looking.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#68

Post by lotsofpulp »

jpalomaki wrote: post #63
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.

I’ve been under the impression that some of the large sites force hotels to sign agreements, which prevent the hotel from giving better rates to other sites. Found one article mentioning this [1]. Edit: but could be these don’t apply to last minute or same day reservation. Looks like for example Hotels.com best price guarantee excludes these. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/sep/15/australians-t...

All the big brands get around this by offering cheaper pricing restricted to their rewards members reserving directly via the brands' website or call center, which is non commissionable. It's free to be a rewards member for all of the hotel rewards programs, so there's no reason not to go that way if your goal is to spend the least amount of money.

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

#69

Post by goshx »

dymk wrote: post #52
Alex3917 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The fee is disclosed in the small print on HT. But it's not part of the total you pay to HT.

Re: Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight

#70

Post by mc32 »

louisswiss wrote: post #55
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 experi…

Heard about them but haven’t used them. If your experience is representative then I hope AB&B doesn’t ruin them.
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