HotelTonight, the San Francisco-based hotel booking application, is now offering deals in Vancouver and Whistler. The “made for mobile from the ground up” platform offers good prices for last-minute hotel deals through its free app.
Now it is present in six Canadian cities, including Calgary, Montreal, Toronto and Victoria.
“We are so excited to see the overwhelmingly positive response to HotelTonight from Canadians who are prolific travellers for pleasure and business,” said CEO Sam Shank. “We will keep pushing forward into other Canadian destinations, making last-minute trips seamless and affordable at home and around the world.”
HotelTonight offers deals on hotel rooms in 150 destinations around the world, and also announced today it has expanded into Central Europe with the launch of Prague, Czech Republic, Budapest, Hungary, and Vienna, Austria.
It’s been a busy few months for HotelTonight both in terms of product and funding.
It recently released a new version of its iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch apps. The new version, HotelTonight 5.0, is optimized for Apple’s latest operating system, iOS7. HotelTonight 5.0 includes a new feature that allows customers to easily scan and add their credit cards, creating a more seamless travel experience.
Meanwhile, the company also raised some serious capital about three weeks ago: $45 million to be exact. The Series D financing was led by Coatue Management, a leading technology-focused investment firm. Since HotelTonight’s launch in January 2011, the company has raised more than $80M USD in funding and established itself as the leader in mobile travel.
Each day at noon local time, HotelTonight offers last-minute hotel rooms at cheap values. The rooms can be easily booked via the app in less than 10 seconds and guests can book up to a five-night stay on the app. All hotels are personally vetted by HotelTonight staff, given a style category (like Basic, Hip or Luxe) and illustrated by mobile-optimized hotel photos.
While I’ve never used the app, I recently downloaded it to take a look at what kind of deals it had for Toronto and Montreal. Unfortunately, for both cities I could only select from five to six deals (for a two-night stay). The cheapest deal went for around $160. The app makers did this for a reason, and when one clicks on the “why so few hotels for sale?” icon it reads: “Hotels compete to appear on the app, and only those that meet our standards – and offer the day’s best value – make the cut.”