The summer travel rush has been good to HotelTonight, the last-minute hotel booking service: the site today announced that it has now had 3 million downloads of is mobile app, and it is marking the occasion by continuing its scaling efforts in the U.S. and UK — where it spearheaded its international push in June, fuelled by its latest $23 million investment.
The company is now covering hotel bookings in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool, as well as St. Louis, Charlotte, Pittsburgh and Nashville. Manchester and Salt Lake City/Park City are coming in September, taking the total number of cities covered by Hotel Tonight up to over 50, with more “aggressive” expansion planned in the months ahead.
HotelTonight is a standout among other hotel booking services, in that its service is only available by mobile — via Android and iOS apps — taking advantage of the idea that it is most likely to be used on the go rather than by organized people who might use their computers to plan where and when they might need a hotel room well in advance.
That service, for the uninitiated, offers three same-day hotel deals at noon local time for a city of your choice. Discounts can be for as much as 70%.
So far, CEO Sam Shank tells me that its international push has been very positive. Riding the Olympics and summer travel wave, since launching in London the service has seen usage grow 100% in the city. He says that for competitive reasons the company is not releasing hard figures on usage. “But they are well above our expectations,” he tells me.
In addition to picking up more consumer users, the company is picking up more hotels to fill out its inventory. The lastest round includes hipster havens Ace Hotel & Swim Club (Palm Springs), the Driskill Hotel (Austin) and The Hoxton (London), among several others.
