The company, which is listed among the top 50 start-ups at the annual technology conference, hopes this will enable it to crack the corporate market and specifically Indonesia.

Chief operating officer Christian Mischler.  catching up with WIT today, said, “Indonesia is still a Blackberry market and people are switching to the new Blackberry 10. We believe Indonesia will stay a Blackberry market.

“It’s also a way for us to get into the corporate sector and help business travellers with spontaneous hotel decisions.”

To date, HotelQuickly has reached 75,000 downloads and expects to hit 100,000 within the next two weeks with the new Blackberry version.

It now covers 10 countries – the latest four being Vietnam, Cambodia, Australia and Macau. Currently it has 300 hotels.

“More hotels are now approaching us and that will help accelerate our content build-up,” said Mischler.

He declined to disclose total number of bookings so far but said the app was seeing daily bookings with the majority of bookings happening in Singapore and Hong Kong, although not necessarily among residents of those two cities. This could be indicative of the two cities being hubs for travellers from across Asia. 

Mischler said they had expected more weekday bookings but instead was seeing a spike in weekend bookings “which shows it is mainly leisure travellers using it”.

On weekends, it is seeing bookings after midnight with some happening at 3am.

You could come up with all sorts of theories as to why bookings would happen so late. Nevertheless Mischler says, “We want to balance out weekday and weekend bookings.”

He added, “Sites like Agoda educated customers to book online on a website, we have to educate customers to book on mobile. That’s the challenge ahead of us,” said Mischler, whose company has so far raised US$600,000 and is hoping to close another US$400,000 soon.

The path to profitability is dependent on how fast it can build its brand, and expand its coverage without sacrificing quality of content.

“The key is to get people to download and then for them to remember they have this app and use it. So we need to stay top of mind. Social media is important to us, as are push notifications but we have to be careful with that. We are also working on partnerships with airlines and transportation companies.”

It also distributes flyers at key gathering places and incentivizes members to refer friends for a $20 voucher. Indeed, right after speaking to Mischler, I received an email from a “friend” offering me a $20 credit if I download the app.

It faces competition of course from not only similar models but OTAs like Agoda or Booking.com which also display last minute deals.

Asked why a customer should use HotelQuickly versus booking.com’s last minute deals, for example, Mischler said, “Their content is too diverse and they show you hotels where they make the most commissions. We show only 3- to 5-star hotels specific to your location and we are cheaper than the OTAs. We are not bound to rate parity because our terms are completely different – we are a private sale channel and we only offer rates from 12pm each day.”

Whether OTAs like Agoda and Expedia agree with that is another thing and it’s bound to create issues with hoteliers who rely on the major OTA brands for distribution.

Mischler was among the founders of online delivery platform, foodpanda (a Rocket Internet start-up), before he moved to launch HotelQuickly. Last month, foodpanda secured a partnership with Singapore Dine, sealing its market leadership position in Singapore.

Asked why he opted to drop food for hospitality, Mischler said, “It’s a similar model, it’s about lead generation. And when I was with foodpanda, I worked on its mobile and then I read about HotelTonight and got interested.

“Yes, it’s a niche market but the travel industry is so massive that even though it is a niche, it can be a very effective niche. Once it is established, it can also be very profitable because you don’t need a lot of staff and the costs work in your favour.”