HotelTonight Arrives in London, Just in Time for the Olympics

HotelTonight is expanding internationally, starting with London — just in time for the Olympics.

The San Francisco company, which allows people to book last-minute hotel deals for the same day at steep discounts, said that it will also be adding additional cities in the U.K and other Western European markets in the near future.

The company said its iOS and Android apps have been downloaded more than two million times, up from 300,000 just a year ago.

By offering deals in more than 40 U.S. cities, plus Toronto and Vancouver, B.C., you can expect downloads to continue to rise, but it also makes HotelTonight more competitive with some other last-minute apps, like Priceline’s Booking.com Tonight application. Although we’ve found that while Priceline’s app has a big selection in a lot of cities, it doesn’t necessarily offer huge discounts.

HotelTonight’s pitch is to provide ways to sell unfilled rooms without impacting a hotel’s brand. And for procrastinators, it offers the ability to find rooms at a discount of up to 70 percent off, starting at noon for the same evening.

HotelTonight recently raised $23 million in a third round of capital, led by US Venture Partners with participation from Accel Partners, Battery Ventures and First Round Capital.

As part of the expansion, HotelTonight also said it was opening a London office and hired Heather Leisman as Managing Director of Europe. Most recently, Leisman ran the supply, operations, customer service and merchandising functions at Jetsetter, a Gilt Groupe company.

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