HotelTonight ends mobile-only strategy with desktop addition

HotelTonight has launched a desktop version of its hotel booking service - prompted, it says, by feedback from customers.

The company, which started life back in 2010 claiming to be the industry’s first mobile-only platform for securing hotels for the same day's stay, calls the move an "opportunity to bring its mobile first perspective to desktop.”

Chief executive Sam Shank declined to give any detail on whether it was receiving a lot of hits from desktop devices.

He says: "With Millennials having overtaken Gen Xers as the largest share of business travelers, customers were asking us for this addition, even as we continue to be a mobile-first company."

He adds that early results for the desktop service are ahead of expectations in both feedback and transaction volumes.

It’s not the first time HotelTonight has departed from its origins as a mobile same-day hotel booking service.

Back in 2014, it began testing a wider booking window of seven days in advance. Then, last year, HotelTonight extended the service to “100 days out.”

Other milestones for the company in recent years include $37 million in Series E funding announced in March 2017 bringing the total raised to just under $118 million.

Recent research from Bookassist, a hotel direct booking specialist, found desktop revenue for hotels via mobile still lags behind desktop despite the dominance of traffic to devices.