HotelTonight Launches 'Tonight +1' Feature For Discounted Last-Minute Stays

Mobile hotel booking app HotelTonight has launched a brand new feature that will allow users to add a discounted night to their stay at the last minute with a few taps of their phone screen.

Tonight +1 will provide travelers with the option of adding another night to their stay at a significant discount in some cases.

The new feature will automatically activate at check-out for same-day, one-night bookings. Tonight +1 will display the second night's discounted rate and then it's up to the user to add the night. This way, in case the unexpected occurs, users can check out later without consequence.

Tonight +1 will also benefit participating hotels as it will allow them to fill unused rooms.

With holiday travel ramping up, the feature arrives just in time for travelers interested in extending their stays for potential Black Friday shopping and family-related events.

Even if guests don't utilize the extra night, they can sleep in past check-out without worry and take their time getting ready to hit the road.

"Our mission is to encourage spontaneity, and Tonight +1 helps us deliver on this in a new way by giving people the opportunity to extend their experiences while getting really great deals," HotelTonight Co-Founder and CEO Sam Shank said in a statement. "It's important that we continue to find unique ways to keep our customer experience fresh and to help our hotel partners preserve brand loyalty."

"With Tonight +1 we've done both, helping turn one-night guests into two-night guests and filling rooms while doubling down on spontaneity."

HotelTonight said users will find "significant discounts" on second nights this holiday season.

By PATRICK CLARKE, www.travelpulse.com 

Travelore Tips: Stayful.Com Offers Last-Minute Boutique Hotel Deals

Contributed by Scott Mayerwitz, AP.

- Looking to break out of that big, boxy, cookie-cutter hotel for your summer vacation?

Then consider Stayful.com, a website that launched last year offering discounts at hundreds of boutique hotels around the country. The site promises a chance to try hotels and inns with more local character and to save a few bucks along the way.

Stayful only lets you book up to 30 days in advance and once a room is booked it is non-refundable. They aren't all small independent hotels - the Peninsula New York showed up on one search - but most promise to be different than a typical hotel stay.

Some of the better-known properties include the Gansevoort Park Avenue in New York, The Standard Downtown in Los Angeles, Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans and the Viceroy Miami. There are also plenty of lesser-known lodging options.

Right now, the site is limited to 10 cities: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle.

Stayful asks you to bid on a hotel price. Some provide instant answers. Others can take up to a day to reply and once the hotel responds, you have just three hours to complete the booking. But this isn't like Priceline or Hotwire where you are locked into a hotel without knowing all the details. Stayful gives you the specific hotel name and tells you - before a credit card is required - if your bid has been accepted. Room types, however, are assigned at check-in.

In Seattle, a one-night stay at The Belltown Inn was suggested for $128. A bid of $124 was offered and instantly approved. With taxes and fees, it came to $145.34. Booking directly through the hotel's site, the same stay would have come to $192.03 with tax. But the reservation came with a cancellation option and at least guaranteed a queen bed. Note: Expedia wanted $185.80 for that same queen bed that could also be canceled. It sometimes pays to shop around.

For the Standard Downtown LA, Stayful recommended a bid of $184. A lowball bid of $124 was met with a big warning: "Yikes! $124 per night has a slim chance of being accepted." Sure enough it was rejected. The site required a one-day wait before another bid could be offered.

Changing dates, a bid of $169 was suggested for a two-night stay. A bid of $165 wasn't accepted but the hotel came back and said that the room could be had for $169. With taxes and fees, that came to $390.39.

But it turns out that wasn't the cheapest price out there. The Standard's own website was offering a non-refundable nightly rate of $166, or $383.46 with tax for a two-night stay. That was almost $7 cheaper than Stayful, and the exact room type was confirmed.

Since Stayful is designed as a way for hotels to unload their unsold rooms, there tend to be more properties listed for a city the closer to your stay you book. A search for a room in New Orleans four weeks out netted only six properties; but a next-night search provided 20.

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