Muntri Mews, Penang: Travellers are becoming more last minute with the availability of same-day booking apps.
From India to Korea, same-day mobile booking apps are appearing across Asia, hoping to make it big in the market that was really pioneered by HotelTonight in December 2010.
And last week, news that the leader in the Asia market, HotelQuickly, has raised another US$4.5 million funding, led by Japanese fund GREE and William Heinecke of Thailand’s Minor International, seems to indicate that investors are buying into the promised land of same-day bookings in the region. The market in the US is currently estimated at US$15 billion a year.
The Hong Kong-based start-up, founded by former Rocket Internet entrepreneurs, has been aggressively building up its content and present in the region – it obviously knows it has to scale quick to keep the San Francisco-based and better-funded HotelTonight at bay if and when it enters the region.
So when will HotelTonight enter Asia?
WIT asked Sam Shank, HotelTonight’s CEO the question after the news of HotelQuickly’s new funding. “Over the last year we’ve added 12 countries and more than 300 destinations, and we’re not taking our foot off the gas anytime soon. That being said, our success rests on fully understanding each new market we launch into, and Asia will be no exception.”
HotelTonight’s Sam Shank: Success rests fully on understanding each new market.
He added, “Since we launched, we’ve been flattered to find several imitations emerge around the world. We’re thrilled with the extra competition – it has kept us focused on continuing to lead the way in new innovations like our personalised hotel offers, and the more options there are, the better for spontaneous holiday travellers.”
It is clear the market is still evolving. At WIT India, SavvyMob, a new start-up is going for the same-day booking market and targeting Millennials. It offers a 48-hour time period.
Last month HotelQuickly also released a reprogrammed and redesigned app to enable travellers to lock in hotel deals one day ahead of checking into the hotel, thereby extending the window of availability. Before the release of the new app, hotel rooms could only be booked for the very same day. The booking window opened at 8am and rooms could be booked until 4am the next morning for the very same night.
HotelQuickly also added a new payment gateway, price filters and third-party hotel reviews, and claims the app has been downloaded more than 300,000 times, mainly driven by organic growth.
The major OTAs, while seeing this as a niche market, are clearly keeping their eye on the segment. In India, the three major OTAs – MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Cleartrip – are betting big on hotels and mobile and all three say there is a clear trend towards last minute bookings by the segment of travellers booking hotels.
Could OTAs with their range of hotels and prices offer customers more choices in the last minute booking market?
Shank believes his model is clearly differentiated from the OTAs. “We’re different from other hotel-booking services for many reasons, but chief among them is that we built HotelTonight from the ground-up for same-day, mobile hotel bookings. Being a mobile-native business allowed us to design an app that is optimised for customers in need of a hotel room right now, without getting distracted by other factors.”
Tomas Laboutka: Asia’s not an easy market.
In Asia though, HotelQuickly clearly sees Agoda as a major competitor. In this interview, HotelQuickly co-founder and CEO Tomas Laboutka, said, “They are controlling the market to a large extent, making customers think they have the best prices. However, our rates are on average 28% cheaper than what they manage to offer, and luckily, more and more users seem to realize that they can save a good amount of money by booking last minute.”
The challenges of creating a last minute booking model for Asia cannot be underestimated – the different markets, the various languages and the varying degrees of infrastructure.
Said Laboutka, “Our members travel through the region, and it is a big challenge to offer a product of equal quality in such a diverse and fragmented geography. Localization is utmost important, without it there is limited hope for success. HotelQuickly is localized to 5 Asian languages plus English, and we see most of our bookings coming from members using the app in their native language — simply because English is not (yet) very commonly spoken here in Asia.”
Its investment by GREE should help it enter the Japanese market. GREE recently launched its own Japan-based, last-minute booking service Tonight, and the investment forms the basis for a partnership between GREE and HotelQuickly aimed at “enhancing their respective services through personnel exchange, the sharing of technical expertise, and other collaboration.”
Meanwhile, HotelTonight recently unveiled a suite of features at Google I/O in San Francisco. They include “Express Check-In”, which allows users to check into their room using their phone and Brivo Labs-powered “Keyless Entry”, which will allow users to unlock their room using the app. 
This makes them the first OTA to introduce mobile check-in and keyless entry features to customers. The Express Check-In feature is currently in pilot mode with select hotels and will be rolling out to additional hotels in the coming weeks. HotelTonight and Brivo Labs are currently in talks with several global hotel chains to debut the Keyless Entry feature in the future.
