Booking.com launched app for last-minute hotel bookings

if you miss you train or meet a airline strike, do not worry. Nowadays, Hotel Reservations giant, a subsidiary of Priceline, launched a new application called Booking Tonight, which is let travelers find a last-minutes hotel and it can deals anywhere in the world with single click. This application is the first global last-minutes app at special saving up 50% than regular price. It can guarantee the lowest price. The travelers can download the app for free from iTunes store because it is designed for iphone and ipod touch.
This application is really easy to use. The user just enter their name, phone number, and email address, a few details about travel preferences as well, including price range, and preferred amenities, and the appserves up a map of nearby hotels. The app will ranked depends on their preference and come complete with Booking.com's extensive library of reviews.

The inspiration of the Booking Tonight is from Uber, because the CEO Darren Huston of the Priceline founded that “People expect more things from their phones.” Moreover is that he thought the company needs to follow the trends of using IT products, only in this way the company can compete the competitors, like HotelTonight.

The limit of this app is that only travelers who have an apple device can use this app while Android users cannot get an access to this service. However, we are not sure if this limit will have a big influence or not. The raison is: from the news, we do not know if the company has found their users are more apple fans than android, and the new app may be a strategy to focus on apple users who may spend more or book more frequency on booking.com.

Regarding the role of technology in this case, there is no doubt that the technology helps the company define when where and what the percentage of the transaction is realized. The finding of the data recording and analysis supported by the technology lead to new solution to narrow down the segmentation and provide the more valued service by app.
On the way to follow the app trend, the inventory advantage of the international company is obvious. Even though the idea may first created by small or medium size company, the big company may easily generate value and get the market share from the smaller one in a short time.

The result of the intense competition may hard to predicted, but one thing is sure that the traveler experience will get better and better.

Yi DONG &Zhen JIA

Source
http://news.booking.com/booking-com-launches-first-global-last-minute-hotel-app
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/booking-now/
http://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Hotel-News/Priceline-division-launches-app-for-last-minute-hotel-bookings?ct=tech
Picture source：http://www.wired.com/2015/01/booking-now/