
Airbnb to Acquire HotelTonight - c_t_montgomery
https://press.airbnb.com/airbnb-signs-agreement-to-acquire-hoteltonight/
======
stef25
What's amazing at Airbnb is their ability to make places look so much nicer in
the pictures than what they look like in reality.

After staying in a crack house in Barcelona, a dirty dark hole in Manhattan, a
"private" villa in France where the owner was screwing an endless stream of
boyfriends behind the flimsy kitchen door at 10AM, a thermite infested
apartment in Sicily with horrid beds, I still feel like a total asshole when
leaving a negative review. I'm not sure why I keep going back to it.

~~~
shereadsthenews
It really seems to depend on the city. For about $100/night in Zurich I stayed
once in a huge top floor flat and once in a bedroom with private bath in a
giant palace with plenty of room to entertain dozens, which I did. My
company's negotiated hotel rate was $425/night and I pocketed the balance.

In NYC all of the Airbnb inventory is bedbug-ridden hovels. Perhaps this
simply reflects the housing stock of the region.

~~~
ulfw
What kind of company pays YOU 425USD regardless of the price of the
accomodation where you stay? Genuinely curious. All I’ve ever seen is (in your
case) “you can expense per night up to 425USD”

~~~
shaklee3
I haven't seen that high, but some companies pay the government per diem rate,
which depends on the city. Some cities are $200/day for food alone.

------
HeavenFox
Those who have used HotelTonight, can you comment on your experience?

For me, there have been several rare occasions when I needed a room at last
minute, but HotelTonight was never actually cheaper than any other aggregators
or booking directly with the hotel. All being equal I vastly prefer booking
direct so I get my points and elite benefits. I guess they have a fancy
interface, and that's... it? Maybe it's market dependent (I only tried it in
NYC and SF)?

~~~
louisswiss
I use it a lot (several times each month for the past ~3 years).

I absolutely love it.

\- You can trust that the hotels are good enough. Never had a bad experience

\- Takes <15s to book

\- They have their own rewards system which really starts to add up the more
you use it

\- They may never give you the absolute cheapest option available in that city
for that night, but you'll get an amazing deal on a higher-quality hotel

\- My experience using other booking sites for 'cheap deals' has been that
you're often treated as a lower-tier customer, for example being given worse
rooms (ground floor, no windows etc). The HotelTonight experience is the
opposite. ~25% of the time, I receive a room upgrade without asking

\- No hidden charges

I'm not a person who is loyal to a brand by nature. But HotelTonight is the
closest I've come to feeling that way so far.

~~~
mrcodedude
"My experience using other booking sites for 'cheap deals' has been that
you're often treated as a lower-tier customer, for example being given worse
rooms (ground floor, no windows etc). The HotelTonight experience is the
opposite. ~25% of the time, I receive a room upgrade without asking"

They're all OTAs. You're just as likely to get a "good" room with HotelTonight
as you would with Priceline, Hotwire, etc. The quality of room you receive is
mostly dependent on room availability and the check-in agent.

~~~
louisswiss
> You're just as likely to get a "good" room with HotelTonight as you would
> with Priceline, Hotwire, etc.

Can't speak for every hotel (obviously), but I know for a fact this isn't true
for several.

Hotels always have better and worse rooms - it's very rare to have a building
where there isn't a loud/dark/musty room or two.

In most hotels where I know a member of staff, they freely admit to having
several 'worse' rooms which are given to booking.com/priceline etc guests
first, regardless of availability.

They purposefully save a few 'better' rooms in case valued customers show up
last minute. For some reason, HT customers get lumped into this category -
maybe because it's assumed they have the purchasing power to become a 'real'
customer in the future (but that's just a guess).

~~~
what_ever
There is a high chance that this is anecdotal, specially if both OTAs were
offering you the room at the same price. For bigger chains, the person at the
front desk hardly cares about where you booked from. It could be the case
where there were very few rooms remaining when you booked with OTAs other than
HT so you ended up with worse rooms.

------
bertil
It’s interesting that no one here, after 160 comments, is speculating about
the impact to Booking.com

B. is the 7th largest internet company in the world but because it’s in
Amsterdam and not US based, hardly anyone think about them. They have
incredible technology, often on-par with the big ones but I’m not anyone here
could name one problem where they pionnered a solution.

Disclaimer: I used to work for one of their subsidiaries.

~~~
pastor_elm
my favorite part about Booking is that it will tell me how many other people
are currently looking at the last available room i'm looking it. Let's me know
if i have to swoop it up quickly!

~~~
pjc50
I'd always assumed that was a lie. To me, the most useful feature of Booking
is the refundability of most of their reservations, so I don't have to book
hotel and flights simultaneously.

~~~
smueller1234
It's not a lie.

Booking has received tremendous regulatory/legal scrutiny on that group of
features and they wouldn't be caught red handed doing something indefensible
in that space. That being said, there are clearly some decisions to be made
about what "currently looking at" means: As engineers, we all know that
nothing is tracking user eyeballs (thankfully), so in reality these things are
necessarily implemented as a rolling sum of non-bot page views within X
minutes.

Whether or not the information is correct, of course, doesn't mean anybody has
to like the feature. I personally really don't like it, but acknowledge that
it was a feature with shockingly significant business impact when first
released.

Source: Used to work there. Read the respective code at the time (~2015/2016
or so).

~~~
pjc50
Good to have an authoritative answer on this! Thanks.

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randomacct3847
pretty interesting. My hypothesis is that there’s a large cohort of people
(myself included) who hesitate to use airbnb because there is still a real
issue of inconsistency with back and forth with host, key hand off, etc that
people who are attracted to hoteltonight (extremely last minute bookings)
would hate and that airbnb is trying to figure out how to appeal to that base.

~~~
why-el
It wouldn't surprise me if Airbnb moves to the hardware space pretty soon,
trusting their long time hosts with say wall-mountable boxes that speak Airbnb
APIs and can facilitates key exchange, door locking/unlocking based on timed
codes, and so on. Heck, build one and Airbnb will most likely buy it from you.
;)

~~~
untog
That stuff already exists, albeit in less advanced forms (a lock box with a
number code, for example). If hosts aren't using them I'm not sure that adding
another layer of technical whatevers on top of it is going to change anything.

------
jonknee
> The HotelTonight app and website will continue to operate as they do today

I really hope that's the case, I love Hotel Tonight but will absolutely stop
using it if I end up getting someone's condo. Regardless, I'm worried that
hotel selection will go way down. They keep emphasizing boutique hotels, but
that's not people go to Hotel Tonight for. I could definitely see large hotel
chains not wanting to do business with Airbnb though...

~~~
tspike
This is boilerplate new acquisition-speak. Even if they wanted to, they
couldn't immediately integrate everything.

1\. Buy company

2\. Draft press release saying "nothing to see here, folks"

3\. Wait a year

4\. Company absorbs what they like, discards the rest

~~~
dmix
There are also plenty of examples where this didn't happen...

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zackmorris
This looks like a good opportunity to discuss something I'm concerned about
regarding booking apps. We used Expedia I believe to book a hotel last year
and I remember that it charged a $20 fee on top of an $80 hotel room. I
believe they had an agreement where the online and in-person price was the
same, so the hotel basically ate that $20.

So it's good for them to get the constant business (similarly to how Groupon
works) but I can't help but feel that more of that $20 should have gone to the
hotel staff, especially maids doing the actual work of cleaning up after
everyone.

To me, running a bunch of web services to book rooms could be done on a
properly configured computer taking 10,000 reservations a second for ~$10 per
month. So the cost for booking apps has got to be mostly logistical (getting
hotels onboarded with the organization, paying for liabilities, etc).

My question is, will competition in these spaces ever lower the fees and free
up more money for labor? Or are we entering an endgame where labor gets
relegated to the shadows?

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Whenever I see comments along the lines of "In my mind you could replace this
20,000 person company with a computer running a script for $10 months", I'm
convinced that folks don't know what really goes in to running a large
e-commerce site.

To be sure, I'm not arguing there isn't a lot of waste at these large
companies, but running a large eCommerce business at scale is a hugely
complicated endeavor. For one, the economics of large OTAs mean that very
small increases in conversion rates can result in _huge_ increases in revenue,
so they all have very large teams optimizing their sites, running a ton of A/B
tests, optimizing their search advertising bidding, etc.

Yes, it definitely would be possible to build a fairly straightforward hotel
booking site with a very small number of people. To do it in a way that makes
any money is a much more difficult problem.

------
louisswiss
This makes a lot of sense.

I travel a lot for work (100+ nights per year).

Sometimes I stay for 2+ nights, often it's just a 1-night stop over.

For 2+ nights, I almost always go with an AirBnB - more space to
cook/work/think etc.

For 1 night though, AirBnBs are too much hassle. I don't want to have to
_choose_ a great location from a long list which includes some terrible
options. I just want a clean bed, bathroom and decent wifi in a good location.
HotelTonight gets me that in under 30s.

I'm not sure how AirBnB locations can/will be built into HotelTonight - after
all HotelTonight is all about ease of use, low friction and flexibility. The
very things AirBnBs are bad at (coordinating check in times etc).

~~~
lbotos
> I'm not sure how AirBnB locations can/will be built into HotelTonight -
> after all HotelTonight is all about ease of use, low friction and
> flexibility. The very things AirBnBs are bad at (coordinating check in times
> etc).

I expect them to just show hotel tonight data in the airbnb interface. From
the press release:

> We are making it easier for people who use Airbnb to find last-minute places
> to stay when Home hosts are often already booked. The availability of
> boutique hotels—in addition to private rooms and entire homes that are
> instantly bookable—helps ensure authentic, high-quality stays are available
> on-demand, especially at the last minute.

I think about it this way all the time: AirBnB bought the product for X price,
because they think it will help them make Y more money. They don't even need
to "merge" as long as the product is profitable but if they can get even 1%
more with a cross over, then AirBnB (the parent co) is making even more money
(with more risk ofc)

~~~
kokokokoko
I'm pretty sure AirBnB acquired HotelTonight so they can legally speculate
about owning a much larger share of overall travel booking, including
traditional hotels, on their S-1.

------
therealx
Theres one other feature of HotelTonight thats super useful - I often want to
book a room very late into the night. Think finding a room at 11pm or 1am. A
lot of hotels dont want to deal with you or aren't sure how to handle the
rate/days. HotelTonight made that unquestionable and easy.

------
Rafuino
No mention of an acquisition price. Congrats to Sam Shank and the team though!

~~~
randomacct3847
Hm not sure if it’s much cause for celebration for the HT team...they raised
$130m and probably sold at max their last valuation. Employees aren’t going to
make out with much and unclear if anyone is getting let go.

Every OTA does last minute bookings now...reality is what they offer has been
largely commoditized.

~~~
nedwin
Got any data to back that up?

My anecdotal understanding was that HotelTonight was doing hundreds of
millions of dollars in revenue. Some component of that $130m may have been
secondary stock sale.

I don't think we have enough data to determine what the price might have been,
or how well employees will do.

~~~
randomacct3847
I’m referring to their last valuation of $400m in 2017. The company hasn’t
hockeysticked since then, by any measure (e.g. App Store rank), so I think we
can deduce the sale price was likely well below $1b, maybe 500m at very best
but guessing lower. Factoring liquidation preferences for VCs and you get a
small pie for most people involved.

~~~
krn
> Factoring liquidation preferences for VCs and you get a small pie for most
> people involved.

Let's say HotelTonight was acquired for $500 mln. How much of that the
founders could get at most based on the last valuation?

~~~
randomacct3847
I don’t know what the terms are or how much the CEO/founder has. Assuming a 2x
liquidation preference there would be $240m left after investors take their
share. If the CEO has 5% then that’s $12m.

------
randomacct3847
I still to this day scratch my head over how we’ve normalized sleeping in
another stranger’s bed, as as hosts have normalized complete strangers
touching our stuff and having sex in our beds. It’s wild.

~~~
hunter23
A majority of the airbnb hosts nowadays are professionally managed ones at
this point. I would say out of my last 10 stays, only 2 of them were hosts who
actually lived in them. Airbnb is essentially a hotel operation at this point.

------
Lucadg
On business trips I prefer hotels for 1 night. 3 nights or more is always an
apartment (Airbnb or Booking.com which is often easier to book with). I hate
eating outside alone and prefer cooking some food while enjoying JRE, Netflix
or a call with friends and family. 2 nights is a mix.

Family trips are always in apartments. It's just nicer than Hotels.

Also, I find hotels pretty sad in general but that's maybe because I worked in
some:)

Edit: typo

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mattkevan
AirBnb used to be great, but in recent years their huge platform fees have put
me off.

I've had great success finding good places to stay by using AirBnb as a
catalogue, then Googling the property and booking through the owner's own
website. Last year we stayed in a lovely house in Bruges for less than half
the price it would have been if I'd booked through AirBnb.

------
neom
There are two CEOs I admire and respect. Two people I have ever met who are
both beyond wickedly smart, and, absolutely wonderful kind truly caring
humans. Sam Shank and Jeff Lawson. Sam the CEO of hotel tonight is an
incredibly brilliant intellectual, and also a genuinely wonderful person. I'm
so happy they both did so well. Great job.

------
orliesaurus
I hope they truly remain independent. It's a great platform. A few years ago I
was in Paris. It was a last minute thing and I used a similar website to
HotelTonight that was the "hot" product in the last minute industry for big EU
cities. Basically I got to stay at a really exclusive hotel for an extremely
interesting rate. Something like 60% of its original value. I guess hotels
don't care anymore at a certain point as long as they get their minimum back.
Especially this was when Airbnb was the new cool kid in town. It is kinda
interesting how Airbnb is just now moving into this market slowly eating the
hotel industry one piece at a time

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capkutay
This just looks like Twitter acquiring vine 2.0.

A big player acquiring an orthogonal product...most likely meaning they'll
just kill it. I doubt hotels will partner with AirBnB on a booking service.

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benatkin
I have no problem getting AirBnb's at the last minute. I look for ones that
say "self check-in" or "check-in anytime" and are bookable instantly. I think
since AirBnb is already succeeding at that, this will just increase their
success in that area. All they need to do is find those offering that service
or have them come to them, whether they be people with extra rooms, or a full
fledged hotel.

~~~
therealx
Usually the stock of these is very low day-of in any major city.

~~~
benatkin
Oh, true, I haven’t travelled in season in a while. I often wind up traveling
in the off season (summer in hot places, winter in cool places that aren’t ski
towns). I think there are some places that tend to be affordable almost year
round, but your comment reminded me what it’s like to try to find a place in
Miami in the late winter. It’s not an AirBnb specific problem, though.

------
dm8
I have used HotelTonight several times and I loved it. In general I found
cheaper deals. Now with AirBnB, it will be interesting to see if hotel chains
that partner with HotelTonight continue working as there is no love lost
between Airbnb and hoteling industry. I guess Airbnb will try to make HT as an
hybrid app of hotels and Airbnb bookings.

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johnchristopher
It's funny how when you talk to some of their higher-ups they still claim they
are a start-up (and so they should be allowed to act like it). But start-ups
rarely acquire.

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Lucadg
Some say Airbnb is diluting their brand. What does it stand for today? It used
to be about the sharing economy, belong anywhere and so on. What is it now?

------
jamisteven
Dying to know what the acquisiton price was. A good friend of mine works for
them and I have been saying for years that they would be acquired.

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Nidaspec
How is HotelTonight, can anyone give me some insight? I have never used their
service in the past.

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foobarqux
Isn't this what Tosi got fired for advocating? He must be having an aneurysm.

------
resalisbury
Airbnb disrupts travel by offering hotel rooms :)

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dana321
I feel like HotelTonight, like HotelTonight!

------
johnchristopher
Is there a list of AirBnb acquisitions ?

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dana321
Like ChickenTonight, only for hotels.

~~~
dana321
Haha, someone don't like this joke

------
crushcrashcrush
Fantastic product, super concerned about AirBnB acquisition - not because of
what they'll do to the product, but I guarantee their partnerships with hotels
and hotel groups will evaporate when contracts expire.

A hotel working with Airbnb is like BlockBuster working with Netflix to share
customer data. The hotels groups aren't as fucking stupid as Blockbuster was,
though.

~~~
throwaway-1283
Completely disagree with this analogy. Hotels have their place, and in so many
ways they can be superior to a home rental.

I am the furthest thing from a luddite, but I personally prefer (as I know
many others) hotels to Airbnb. There's a consistency to the hotel product that
you can't get with Airbnb that I place a premium on, especially for short or
last minute stays.

I'm also not really sure why Airbnb is considered a "tech" co in the same way
FB or Netflix is. There's is no real time component to the app, and it isn't
dealing with billions of people using the app at the same time like a FB or
Google is. In the few times I've used Airbnb over the years I'm honestly
surprised by how little "tech" really permeates my experience (i.e. its just a
basic web app that facilitates the listing + payment transfer +
messaging...once I've made the reservation and paid Airbnb's job is
essentially done).

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
I honestly question who hotels are for. I'm in the top 2% in income, and I
actually prefer staying in a hotel, but they'r e just insanely expensive.

Do you mostly stay in hotels for business reasons? Or are you just rolling in
money?

~~~
jonknee
If an Airbnb is a lot cheaper there is going to be a reason, often it's
location. I tend to move around and the ridiculous cleaning fees for Airbnb
make it a non-starter. I'm flying to San Diego tomorrow and Hotel Tonight has
several nice looking choices at around $100 a night (~$120 with taxes and
fees). I just looked at Airbnb and I can get a studio apartment in a similar
area for $79 a night which seems like a steal, but it's $184 after fees! $70
cleaning, $19 service fee and $16 "Occupancy taxes and fees". Airbnb is worse
than Ticketmaster in this regard.

I would only use Airbnb for long stays when I need extra bedrooms. It just
doesn't make sense for the traveling I do or for most business travel.

~~~
tedmiston
It sounds like that host has configured their listing wrong if cleaning is the
same price as a night rental. Or they set the base cleaning price very high on
purpose to deter short-term guests. I'm used to seeing the cleaning price more
~$10–20 per night.

~~~
zemvpferreira
I’m a multi-unit host and I charge a $50 cleaning fee for a $100/Night two-
bedroom.

I’ve been thinking of doubling or trebling the cleaning fee and reducing my
nightly rates lately to better mirror my costs: I spend almost as much time
greeting and cleaning guests who stay two nights as those who stay two weeks,
so I spend a lot more time in two weeks if I have multiple guests.

Upping the cleaning fee to $100-150 so it pays for my ‘greeting time’ as well
sounds fairer for everyone: it’ll be cheaper for long term guests, as it
should since they’re less work per day.

~~~
secabeen
Interesting. I actually charge much more for the room, and less for the
cleaning fee. Charging a low cleaning fee sends the message that I'm not doing
as much cleaning, and I don't. Fresh sheets and towels, of course, a full
roomba-sweep, clean toilet/shower/bathroom sink and clean, scrubbed
countertops are a must. But the fridge has some spots, the floor doesn't get
mopped unless it's bad, and there's often dust on the windowsills, spiderwebs
and dirt in the patio door cracks, the windows have streaks, etc.

I've found that if I charge less for cleaning, then do less cleaning (I can
usually turn my one-bedroom space in about 75 minutes, if I get the roomba
started before I do), I'm happier, and the guests tolerate it. It's not hotel-
quality, but I'm not providing a hotel, I'm providing a short term home.

------
Alex3917
Fuck hotel tonight, they're not even a real business and they're just scamming
people out of money. They hide their mandatory "resort fees" underneath the
Pay button so that it's not visible on screen, and those fees aren't included
in any of the prices that are either shown initially or are visible on payment
screen (room rate, taxes & fees, or total).

You can see how this works in this video I made here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdrFYb4otTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdrFYb4otTs)

The entire app is designed to trick people about what the actual prices are.
The founder is a total scumbag and belongs in prison.

~~~
jonknee
In prison? That's exactly how all hotel bookings work. I agree resort fees are
a scam, but that's how it works and it's always charged directly by the
property.

~~~
Alex3917
> that's how it works and it's always charged directly by the property.

If the hotel wants to charge their own fee separate from the app then that's
not a problem at all. The problem is the Hotel Tonight lying about what the
prices are.

~~~
dymk
If hotels aren't disclosing these fees to HotelTonight, that's hardly HT's
fault.

~~~
goshx
The fee is disclosed in the small print on HT. But it's not part of the total
you pay to HT.

~~~
jak92
when is a fee not a fee? why isn't it included in the fee + taxes ?

~~~
goshx
That's the point we are trying to make. I don't agree with this practice. I
don't agree with the "Resort Fee" practice and I'd love to learn about a hotel
aggregator that doesn't do this. Any recommendation?

~~~
therealx
I dont think they exist. This is part of how the hotel stipulates its
operation and listing on a website.

 _Edit:_ from a US perspective, maybe things are better over the pond.

------
seppin
damn.

------
samstave
AirBnB has massive amount of money and clout.

What should one do with money and clout?

Build a thing...

What type of thing?

AirBnBs are consumed by primarily individuals/couples

How provid?

Welp - where do they go?

They have the data.

So - how about buy up and build tiny-home communities in highest ABnB places?

Partner with Epic Tiny Home providers such as WindRiverTinyHomes

Why not throw that clout around on city planning depts whi dont know how to
zone, divest parcels... Alameda is an example - whom I have spoken with about
just this

Why not work with Warren Buffets Manufactured Homes groups (whom I have spoken
with) to make an inventory....

Why not do many things...

Fuck AIRBnB - have a 20 year vision.

Build a freaking community based on a bolt-on tiny home over a shared common
infrastructure in a very common design-build model. (Ive designed built gas
stations, fast food, cell sites, data centers, and millions of square feet) -
there are LOTs of people like me.

Go build something.

