HOTELMARKETING.COM

HotelTonight setting out to be the next $1 billion company in travel

November 04, 2011 | Online Travel

That’s a pretty bold claim for a company that specializes in a tiny niche of the hotel market. But hotel merchants apparently like HotelTonight, because it helps them deal with the problem of “distressed inventory.”

HotelTonight’s timing may be good, since more than 35 percent of travelers plan to book a hotel room on their mobile device in the next year, according to a study released by PhocusWright, a global travel market research company.

HotelTonight joins companies like WillCall for event tickets and appointment manager Schedulicity (which launched at DEMO ’11), that help merchants sell distressed inventory, which Shank calls the on-demand economy. It also competes with more established travel-booking sites like Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak and Hipmunk.

HotelTonight is expanding the market of potential hotel occupants, says Shank, rather than cannibalizing hotel profits by forcing them to offer discounts, a la Groupon. The app instead is targeting an affluent user base who can afford to stay in a hotel, but might not have even thought to do so. Part of the appeal is that HotelTonight doesn’t list every hotel in every city, just the cool ones, like Seattle’s Ace Hotel, or the Talbot Hotel in Chicago.

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