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Airbnb Confirms its Plans to Buy Last-minute Hotel Booking App ‘HotelTonight’

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In January, the Wall Street Journal had reported that Airbnb was planning to acquire the hotel-booking application HotelTonight, but the negotiations for the transaction had “gone cold”. But, on Thursday, the company confirmed in a statement, that it is going to acquire the last-minute hotel booking business HotelTonight.

airbnb
Image Source: abc.net

The HotelTonight is a hotel booking app that allows its users to find and book good and affordable hotels even at the last minute. The app is specially designed to help its partners to sell their unsold rooms, and similarly, it is beneficial for the people, too, who are always on the go or for the ones who are in the need of last-minute arrangements.

This acquisition will help the Airbnb users to easily book hotels for their immediate plans, and they will have the freedom to travel without months-long planning. HotelTonight, currently, is operating in America, Europe and Australia. It also offers great discounts to entice more users. The company was recently valued at $463 million in the private market.

After treehouses and the boutique hotels, this is another progressive step for Airbnb towards growth. Last year, with the introduction to boutique hotels, the company claimed to have gained raised profits, and with the success of the boutique hotels, even the company has doubled the number of those hotels.

Airbnb has not disclosed the terms and the sum of the deal. Also, even after the deal, HotelTonight will operate as a separate entity and will work collaboratively with the Airbnb President Greg Greeley.

“We started HotelTonight because we knew people wanted a better way to book an amazing hotel room on-demand, and we are excited to join forces with Airbnb to bring this service to guests around the world,” Sam Shank, co-founder and CEO of HotelTonight said in a statement. “Together, HotelTonight and Airbnb can give guests more choices and the world’s best boutique and independent hotels a genuine partner to connect them with those guests.

Airbnb has been working on expanding its services and acquiring other hotel booking services in order to grow bigger. Also, the start of the year for Airbnb was with the acquisition of Danish startup Guest. A platform which provides the facility to book venues for meetings and other work-related events.

How Deep Kalra Booked His Entrepreneurial Journey Through MakeMyTrip

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An ambitious dream begins with a huge risk, courage and self-confidence. This is the story of a man from India who put everything on risk to become one of the leading business giants. This is the story of Deep Kalra, the founder of MakeMyTrip.com, a leading Indian online travel company that ensures smooth travel and comfortable stay.

Deep is a MBA graduate from India’s pioneer business school Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He has completed a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Stephens College, Delhi. Soon after completing his MBA, Kalra took up the job opportunities with big MNCs like GE Capital, ABN AMRO Bank, etc. But the entrepreneur inside him had already started to sprout.

Deep Kalra
Image Credit: MakeMyTrip

In 1995, Deep left his job with the Bank and joined hands with an American bowling company. With the boss not around, Deep was bit lost initially. But, he took full ownership and led the team. In the coming years Deep Kalra would manage to lay more than 200 bowling lanes across India on his own. This single handed experience boosted Deep’s confidence by multiple folds and he decided to put a foot in his own start-up.

The Start-up Story
Deep soon resigned from AMF to focus on his own venture. It was this time when he realized the magnificent potential that Internet platform held in its store. And this boom in the online community was a perfect place to launch his big business idea.

India was still getting used to the internet platform but the percentage was growing day by day. On one hand, there was a super fast platform which connected the whole world in seconds and on the other hand people were still standing in queues to buy travel tickets. The other problem Deep observed was the messed up online travel booking platform. These observations then altogether gave birth to an organized online travel booking platform ‘India Ahoy’,in 2000, which later was renamed to MakeMyTrip.com. Deep received an initial fundimg of $2 million from eVentures and was in the market to lead the travel industry along with his co-founders Keyur Joshi, Rajesh Magow and Sachin Bhatia.

The Ups and Downs in MakeMyTrip Journey
Launching an online travel booking platform back in 2000, when Indians were still not clear about the basic concept of Internet, was a challenge in itself. So, the founders had to play the game strategically. Therefore, MakeMyTrip’s initial years were dedicated to serve the US-to-India travelling community. This was a baby step towards success but added value to their status in the market.

The Fall
Kalra faced his biggest fallback two years after the launch of MakeMyTrip.com when the dotcom market crashed taking down every last piece of information. This resulted in a drastic crash on all the company’s team. As the head of the company Deep had to take some difficult decisions to save the company. The decision included reducing MMT’s staff to almost half the original number and put a complete halt on his and some of his colleagues’ salary for 18 months.

The Rise
The crash of dotcom market taught Deep Kalra some valuable lessons which he would implement in his company’s future. The coming years proved to be the Golden Period in MakeMyTrip’s career. This was the time when Indian Railways, Indian Aviation and other domestic and international flight companies were stepping into the online platform. Deep Kalra, without wasting any time, grabbed this opportunity and decided to broaden his business spectrum. MakeMyTrip was no longer just an overseas travel booking platform. It was now for the Indian domestic market too.

The company provided added features like holiday packages, hotel bookings, and railway tickets. The company’s customer base and revenue was increasing at an unimaginable pace. In 2008, when rest of the world was facing the demon of recession, MMT was entering the 1000 Crore club. But Deep marks the company’s biggest achievement till date as its listing on NASDAQ, an US stock exchange.

Setting an Example
Launching MakeMyTrip was the biggest risk that Kalra took. But this risk is what made him a pioneer in the travel industry. The success of MakeMyTrip, has in turn, tremendously boosted the confidence of young entrepreneurs in India. So be it from bridging the gap between Indian and foreign investors, revolutionizing the traveling industry in the country to inspiring Indian youth to take risks and succeed, Deep Kalra has proven himself to be the man whose vision and ambition created history.