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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 i
by randomacct3847 8y ago
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.
- tudelo 8y agoTo 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.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- linuxftw 8y agoBy how much? I suspect they simply were operating at a loss to build up their brand. Jet.com did the same thing.
- koboll 8y agoI've gotten $300-400 rooms for ~$120 several times. Nice boutique hotels in resort destinations, but at off-peak times of year.
- jonknee 8y agoWell 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.
- linuxftw 8y agoJust 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.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoI am surprised to see that Hotel Tonight is cheaper than the ihg.com Kimpton website. Although, I wonder if IHG leaves themselves wiggle room to offer different pricing to different channels by saying their price guarantee doesn't apply within 24 hours of checkin: 5. Find a Lower Rate. If you find a lower rate on an eligible, non-IHG website within 24 hours of making your reservation on the IHG direct channel, and it is more than 24 hours before the standard check-in time for the hotel where you made your reservation, tell us about it by completing and submitting the online claim form (“Claim Form”). We will verify the lower rate by comparing the rate found on the IHG website or mobile app with the rate found on the non-IHG website for the same hotel, room type, stay dates, number of guests, and cancellation policy. I'm actually shocked that they would do that, because now I will definitely shop around, I had erroneously thought their best price guarantee would save time.
- linuxftw 8y agoKimpton charges an additional 'resort fee' which is collected directly by the 'resort'. If you book direct, it's quite possible this is included in their price, but IDK.
- manigandham 8y agoHotelTonight's model is to find and offer up rooms for last-minute demand that would otherwise go empty. Hotels are happy to offer discounts for these. It's really just automating the same deals you could get if you called.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoThe bigger brands don't offer any discounts compared to their official sites. They can change prices many times during the day, but the official brand's website will always be the cheapest. 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.
- linuxftw 8y agoThis is what priceline et al have been advertising for two decades.
- manigandham 8y agoLast minute? That was HT's original thing, same day bookings in an easy app.
- linuxftw 8y agoNo, it wasn't there original thing. Last minute hotel deals have been a thing for decades online. Oh, they have an app? That doesn't make their ideal original, nor were they the first to book 'last minute deals' on an app anyway.
- manigandham 8y agoLast-minute same-night deals was HotelTonight's entire business before they added all the other features like memberships and future bookings. That's where the name comes from. I didn't mean they were the first to do deals but nobody cares about that anyway. Users only care if it works for them, and HT has one of the smoothest apps with some of the biggest discounts. When I started using HT years ago, I could book a room in less than a minute at a lower price than any other online source. Anyways, as to the original point, they might have lost money on some deals but not all of them, and this is directly from private hotel owners I spoke with.
- jpalomaki 8y agoI’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-told-to-call-hotels-rather-than-rely-on-booking-sites-for-cheaper-rates https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/sep/15/australians-t...
- lotsofpulp 8y agoAll 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.
- jdeibele 8y agoFound this was true for car rentals last weekend. Went to an aggregator, saw their price, went to the to the car rental company to compare. Aggregator price was 2/3rds of the rental company's lowest price. Have found the same for airline flights. Google Flights showed me a flight on Delta and provided a link that was much cheaper than I could find on their own site. Absolutely no problems with either reservation. Not sure why people would go direct unless it's their employer's policy or something.
- splonk 8y agoCorrect, but this is being slowly phased out in some areas, particularly in the EU due to regulations. e.g. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=2d2ab9fe-a2a5-4f37-be33-914f5a30f441 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=2d2ab9fe-a2a5...
- the_watcher 8y agoAirbnb 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 scale their hotel inventory than anything else, although I suppose last-minute travel may simply be better served by hotels than home-sharing. [0] https://press.airbnb.com/more-hotels-are-using-airbnb/ https://press.airbnb.com/more-hotels-are-using-airbnb/
- gav 8y agoI think it's a smart choice to give their customers the option for hotels, it solidifies Airbnb as a one-stop-shop for travel experiences. There's a lot of cases where a hotel makes sense, such as short trips (especially if it's just one night), or business travel (some companies have policies that exclude non-hotel stays from reimbursement for safety concerns), and so on. You don't want to send these customers elsewhere.
- vegannet 8y agoDoes 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.
- randomacct3847 8y agoCheck out Sonder
- Numberwang 8y agoHaving lived in close to a 100 airbnb apartments soon and never once experienced an issue with the checking and checkout or a larger concern about the quality or communication, I'd recommend you to give it another go if you have the chance. Because your concerns are not warranted.
- randomacct3847 8y agoIt’s fine 95% of the time. If you are booking an Airbnb same day as check in it’s going to have to be an instant booking, which is a fraction of the Airbnbs available. If you’re a biz traveler and your flight is delayed or getting in late the comfort of knowing you can enter a hotel that is big, easy to find, and lobby open and attended to 24/7 is much more comforting than anything you can book on Airbnb. It’s hard to argue with.
- eiopa 8y agoMy 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 :(
- ghaff 8y agoOr 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.
- pfranz 8y agoI've had HotelTonight installed on my phone for years, but have only had to use it once or twice. I only travel a few times a year and tend to use it when my plans fall through. I generally book ahead of time, often with the hotel directly. The most obvious example I had using it was when I missed a flight and it was rebooked for the next morning. I was tired and I remember getting in a cab/Uber and finding out the friend who dropped me off wasn't able to let me crash there for the night. Before we had left the airport I had booked a room nearby and could direct the driver there. The hotel was nice. I might have had to wait 10m for the hotel to receive a fax confirming my booking (faxing reservations seems to be pretty common with a lot of hotels). There's no way I could have done that booking directly. It would have taken me 10x as long to figure out which hotels were nearby, near my cost, what rooms were available, and check out. I do those things when booking ahead of time, but they're also much harder to do on a phone. I'll be bummed if it I lose this contingency.
- ghaff 8y agoFax? Seriously? I haven’t used a fax with a hotel in decades. I’d probably try one or two major chain apps and, failing that, Expedia or booking.com. Perhaps HotelTonight has more options for last minute but there are plenty of other sites that let me book quickly online.
- why-el 8y agoIt 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. ;)
- gjs278 8y agothat does nothing to resolve the fact that many air bnb situations involve a bedroom in someone’s occupied house
- randomacct3847 8y agoYes, not necessarily novel either. Some Hilton and Marriott hotels have “digital keys” that you’re granted through their app once you check in on the app to unlock your room.
- untog 8y agoThat 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.
- lavezzi 8y agoThey already advertise third party products for hosts on their website IIRC. They are fully aware of the market.
- yesimahuman 8y agoEspecially for business travelers. The quality of the average listing has gone down quite a bit (lots of crappy quick flips with no amenities), combined with the inconsistent experience, means I've pretty much stopped considering airbnb for business travel (I did used to enjoy it compared to being stuck in a hotel for work which can get pretty depressing)
- splonk 8y agoThey're aware of this, and are in some stage of building out a business travel product. I believe part of their product roadmap includes identifying/segregating some of their more reliable inventory that's more suitable for business travelers. No idea exactly what's launched beyond what's at https://www.airbnb.com/work https://www.airbnb.com/work, though. (Not affiliated with AirBnb, but I had a chat with the tech lead of their business travel team last year).
- draw_down 8y agoYeah, the uncertain/inconsistent parts of Airbnb aren't great. Waiting for the host to respond if you need them, having to tell them why you're visiting, figuring out the entry details/getting the keys, whatever rules they have about cleanliness and so forth. For one or two nights all that stuff is a pain.