The world’s first website dedicated to hotel switching has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise £250,000.
Nightly.travel takes the best value nights from one hotel and combines them with the best value nights of a second hotel to help travellers save up to 70% on their city stays, a practice Nightly.travel calls hotel switching.
The company is inviting customers and outside investors to become shareholders through the crowdfunding platform Seedrs.
The company will use the investment to increase its hotel supply from 75,000 hotels today to over 290,000 hotels, agree new commercial partnerships to drive traffic, and trial hotel-to-hotel transportation transfers for customers as part of a hotel switching package.
Hotel switching explained
Hotel switching is the process of changing hotels during a trip to take advantage of fluctuations in nightly room rates.
For example, a customer choosing a five-night stay in New York that costs £1,500 might think each night costs £300, but the hotel could actually be charging £225 per night for the first two nights and £350 per night for the last three nights because of local demand. So by finding a second hotel with a rate lower than the £350 per night for the last three nights, Nightly.travel helps users make big savings.
Research by Nightly.travel has found that travellers are willing to switch hotels if it means they’ll save money, with over 70% of 1,100 travellers surveyed agreeing.
The company is initially targeting the value seeker sector, which Nightly.travel estimates accounts for 17% of all travellers based on research from TripAdvisor. David Ferreira, co-founder of Nightly.travel, says: “Hotels are expensive so travellers are finding better value alternatives for their stays, which is one reason for the growth in companies such as Airbnb.
“By finding a way to significantly cut the price of hotel stays, we think hotel switching can keep travellers coming back to hotels instead of seeking alternative accommodations and allow them to experience the full service and amenities we all love from a hotel stay.”
Nightly.travel is powered by a bespoke algorithm that pairs complementary hotels based on their review scores, locations and star ratings. It compares all combinations of stays across two hotels, finding lower cost room rates in one hotel and then combining them with room rates in other hotels in the same city to come up with the lowest priced combinations.
Customers make one booking transaction on the website, which then processes confirmations with the chosen hotels.
