Startup and emerging hotel apps: a trend for 2018 and beyond?

This year’s Phocuswright Conference Summit showed a very unique, and unmistakable, trend in hotel apps. Of the 24 startup and emerging companies that exhibited onstage, almost half of them dealt with some aspect of hotels, be it in ease of booking or discounted room prices. Does this suggest that startup and emerging hotel apps are a trend for 2018 and beyond?

While it’s unclear if these, or any other, hotel apps will ultimately become “the next big thing,” it’s become clear that the hotel industry is looking to stay competitive. According to Skift, as Expedia got rid of its “price matching guarantee” – where the online travel agency promised to honor a cheaper flight, vacation package, hotel booking or any other offering to the end consumer within 24 hours of purchase – hotel chains across the country began ramping up their direct-booking campaigns that included a “best price guarantee” that’s nearly identical to the one formerly offered by Expedia.

“Our marketplace, as well as the broader landscape, has evolved so much that there are so many easier ways to save than there were when this was invented. Our customers now have their hands on the savings steering wheel themselves. They don’t need the old booster seat anymore,” says Expedia spokeswoman Sarah Gavin.

'Gavin’s statement suggests that the average traveler doesn’t need to deploy the use of hotel apps to save money, but it doesn’t explain the popularity of such apps as Hopper, who expanded their price prediction technology to include hotels back in October 2017.

TechCrunch says that Hopper has more than 17 million installs and is ranked at number 13 in the United States in the travel app category. (It should be interesting to see how Waylo, which exhibited at this year’s Phocuswright Conference Summit, and which promises to be the “first hotel price prediction app, a Hopper for hotels,” can compete with Hopper’s latest expansion into the hotel industry.)

So whether they’re offering discounted room prices like Bidroom, or disrupting the way hotels view their inventory like Splitty Travel, it looks like hotel apps will remain trending.