As a follow up to yesterday’s post about where to sell your hotel room, here is a good article posted on skift.com. Who has the best smartphone app for same day bookings? The are article reviews the apps from a consumer point of view and with the main takeaway that the winning app will make it easy for guests to find what they want and book it with the least amount of taps.
“Tonight-only deals” channels such as hoteltonight.com offer a great opportunity for hotels to fill up those rooms that would otherwise have remained empty. The downside is the discounts that run up to 70% of the normal rate. At such steep discounts hotel cannot afford to sell these rooms via their own website as it would undermine the value of other rates and products far too much. However having someone in the room to cover the expenses (plus a little extra) is far better than an empty room. Since this is a mobile guest.. the hotel should create additional opportunities for the guest to get involved and book other services of the hotel, maybe not at 70%, but still at a small discount, or try to get the guest to engage with the hotel.
The “Tonight-only deals” guest found the hotel using her mobile device, there is a good change that she might buy some other hotel services, if presented on her mobile device.
