In January, the Wall Street Journal had reported that Airbnb was planning to acquire the hotel-booking application HotelTonight, but the negotiations for the transaction had “gone cold”. But, on Thursday, the company confirmed in a statement, that it is going to acquire the last-minute hotel booking business HotelTonight.
The HotelTonight is a hotel booking app that allows its users to find and book good and affordable hotels even at the last minute. The app is specially designed to help its partners to sell their unsold rooms, and similarly, it is beneficial for the people, too, who are always on the go or for the ones who are in the need of last-minute arrangements.
This acquisition will help the Airbnb users to easily book hotels for their immediate plans, and they will have the freedom to travel without months-long planning. HotelTonight, currently, is operating in America, Europe and Australia. It also offers great discounts to entice more users. The company was recently valued at $463 million in the private market.
After treehouses and the boutique hotels, this is another progressive step for Airbnb towards growth. Last year, with the introduction to boutique hotels, the company claimed to have gained raised profits, and with the success of the boutique hotels, even the company has doubled the number of those hotels.
Airbnb has not disclosed the terms and the sum of the deal. Also, even after the deal, HotelTonight will operate as a separate entity and will work collaboratively with the Airbnb President Greg Greeley.
“We started HotelTonight because we knew people wanted a better way to book an amazing hotel room on-demand, and we are excited to join forces with Airbnb to bring this service to guests around the world,” Sam Shank, co-founder and CEO of HotelTonight said in a statement. “Together, HotelTonight and Airbnb can give guests more choices and the world’s best boutique and independent hotels a genuine partner to connect them with those guests.
Airbnb has been working on expanding its services and acquiring other hotel booking services in order to grow bigger. Also, the start of the year for Airbnb was with the acquisition of Danish startup Guest. A platform which provides the facility to book venues for meetings and other work-related events.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.