Hotel Tonight has just launched in Australia, giving disorganised, stranded or just particularly laissez-faire travellers easy access to cut-price geo-targeted accommodation through their smartphones. If you’re stuck without a place to stay on a last-minute business trip, you could be booked into a hotel room in as little as 10 seconds.
Hotel Tonight is available on Android and iOS, and its hook is that as check-in time gets closer on any given day, prices fall. We checked the price on Sydney’s Radisson Blu Hotel, for example, and saw that its $182 base price — a saving over the $329 list price that Hotel Tonight lists as standard — fell to $164 after 12PM. After 6PM, it’ll fall even further.
There’s a a useful extra that tracks rates for any hotels you tag once you’re signed in, notifying you if prices fall or if stock of rooms runs out. You can book for whichever day you’re on or jump ahead to the next weekend. If you’re on an iPhone or other iOS device, you’ll get a unique feature called Escapes, which offers slightly broader geo-targeting to facilitate weekend getaways; it’ll show you hotels within driving distance of your location at any given time.
Hotel Tonight lists prices from seven days out, although if you have the option it’s probably a smarter idea to wait until the last minute possible. [Hotel Tonight]