July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Picking the right hostel can make or break your travel experience, and WeHostels wants to make sure you pick the accommodation that is right for you.

WeHostels is a mobile app for booking hostels and cheap hotels. Today, the startup revealed its latest update, which makes the app more friendly to people traveling in Europe. It is now available in German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese as well as English, and updates prices accordingly in pounds and euros depending on your location. WeHostels also announced a partnership with German Ventures, which will provide capital as well as strategic and operational assistance to facilitate the company’s European expansion plans.

WeHostels is a useful solution for those backpackers and wandering souls who don’t like to plan ahead but also don’t want to wander the streets aimlessly or rely on guidebooks to find accommodations. Listings include more than 40,000 places in 800 cities. While traveling, you open the mobile app and search through available listings in your destination. Each listing contains additional practical information as well as photos, comments, pricing and an option to book.

Founder Diego Saez-Gil said the target market so far has been the U.S., but since launching in August, WeHostels has seen significant organic growth in Europe and Latin America, since those are major backpacker/budget-travel destinations. The startup is responding to this demand accordingly by refocusing attention toward international markets.

“In Europe, the travel market is huge for young people and we see a huge opportunity,” he said in an interview. “The larger vision for the company is to become the world’s largest mobile travel agency for young travelers, providing all the products and services that they need on-the-go. As a travel company, we have even more reasons to go global early. The big challenge with expanding internationally is that you have to understand the local culture when it comes to doing marketing, community management and customer support.”

Saez-Gil said American startups are increasingly looking abroad for expansion in the early stages. Companies like Uber, AirBnB, and HotelTonight have met with success outside of U.S. borders, and the infrastructure and web/mobile penetration numbers are growing quickly in international markets. WeHostels competitors include Priceline’s Booking.com, Hostelworld.com, Expedia’s Hotels.com, AirBnB, and Couchsurfing. WeHostel’s takes a mobile-first approach, which Saez-Gil said distinguishes it from competitors.

“Mobile growth is exponential in international markets and smartphones already outnumber PCs,” he said. “The travel industry is a huge market dominated by big players like Priceline, Expedia, and TripAdvisor, but it has been slow to innovate on mobile and provide great services to mobile users. We are the only company that is focused on mobile offerings for affordable accommodations.”

The company was founded after Saez-Gil traveled around Europe and continuously felt the need for a mobile service that could connect him with places to stay. Hostels can range from brightly-colored eccentric hubs where travelers come together to swap stories to seedy dark buildings filled with questionable sanitation and mysterious noises. He relied primarily on guidebooks and word-of-mouth to navigate, and he felt that there was a better alternative.

WeHostels first started out as a social network for cheap travel accommodation called InBed.me, which raised $1.2 million in seed financing. The company received high demand for a mobile offering and responded accordingly by going mobile-first. This decision paid off and WeHostels has grown its bookings by 778 percent since December. Along these same lines, today’s updates are also a result of user demand.

“Last year we saw the growth we were having on mobile queries, so we made a bold decision: let’s go mobile or go home,” Saez-Gil said. “Now we saw the potential of international markets so we made a new bold decision: let’s go global or go home.”

German Ventures will support WeHostels in adapting to international markets. WeHostels has plans to release iPad and Android apps this summer and will continue to add new currencies for South American and Asian countries as well. There are also plans to add more budget hotels into the listings and expand the Hot Trips feature which helps people hunt down housing during big events like SXSW, St.Patrick’s, and Coachella.

WeHostels is headquartered in New York with offices in Bogota or Munich.

Photo credit: WeHostels

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

When you find yourself without a place to stay, HotelTonight helps you find one. Today, the last-minute hotel booking app released an update that seeks to give customers added confidence in their booking, as well as convenience.

‘Snap Your Stay’ is a new review feature where customers can post personal photographs from their stay. Once at the hotel, visitors open the app and are prompted to take a series of photos of the bed, bathroom, view, lobby etc… Once completed, the photos can be edited within the app itself, which even contains light filters (so you won’t need to open Instagram). The images are shareable on social media and will be available as part of the hotel’s profile in the app.

Popular travel sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor are based on user-generated reviews that are [in theory] less biased than branded content. All the hotels on HotelTonight are currently profiled with custom photography. Snap Your Stay will add a layer of accountability and engagement by allowing customers to share what the experience was really like.

“It’s clear that people are excited about sharing information to help other travelers make informed decisions about where to stay,” said founder and CEO Sam Shank to VentureBeat. “With this new release, HotelTonight has reinvented the hotel review for the mobile age. We’ve taken something that is typically very time-intensive and done after your trip concludes, and made it fun, visual, mobile-friendly and something you do during your trip.”

Shank used to work for a travel review site called TravelPost and said he wanted to incorporate hotels reviews into HotelTonight in a way that made sense for the last-minute, mobile user. Combined with the new Price Guarantee feature, he said travelers will have more information and peace of mind when booking rooms at the last minute. The Price Guarantee feature means that HotelTonight will guarantee its rates against competitors offerings, so people don’t need to worry about missing the best deal.

HotelTonight launched in 2011 and is now available in 12 countries and over 100 destinations around the world with more than 2500 hotel partners. Each day at noon local time, HotelTonight offers a new curated set of hotel deals. If you need a hotel room on-the-fly, you open the app, enter your destination, and it will present you with unsold rooms at steep discounts that can be booked on your smartphone.

The company released version 4.0 in September 2012 with more personalized recommendations based on their exact location, booking history, and feedback. Since raising $23 million in June 2012, HotelTonight accelerated global expansion and added German and Swiss destinations. Shanks said this is evidence of HotelTonight’s role as a “mobile commerce trail blazer.”

“We’re innovators in the space,” Shank said. “In fact, we invented the category of last minute hotel booking apps. We’re hyper-focused on mobile travel, and today’s news speaks to our commitment to innovate and continuing pushing the boundaries.

HotelTonight is based in San Francisco, California with a recently opened European headquarters. The company has raised over $35 million to date and is available on iOS or Android for free in English, Spanish, German, Italian, and French.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The founders of HotelTonight must have fancied an alpine ski vacation this winter, because today the popular app announced that is now available in Germany and Switzerland.

HotelTonight is a last-minute hotel booking app that connects travelers with available accommodation from their mobile phones. It is now available in 10 countries and over 80 destinations around the world. It also announced that it surpassed 4 million downloads.

Each day at noon local time, HotelTonight offers a new set of deals. If you find yourself without a place to stay in a strange city, simply launch the app and select the city, and it will present you with unsold rooms at steep discounts. Travelers can book the deal through their smart phones, and in no time at all, be staying comfort.

HotelTonight opened its doors in January 2011 and raised $23 million last June to promote global expansion. The San Francisco-based company has a strong U.S. presence and recently opened its European headquarters. In addition to Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the U.K., it is now active in Berlin, Munich, Zurich, and Geneva.

HotelTonight has also been busy updating the product. The 4.0 version of the iOS and Android apps debuted in September to provide travelers with more personalized recommendations based on their exact location, booking history, and feedback. These efforts have not gone unrecognized by users, venture capitalists, or the tech community. Apple named HotelTonight one of the most disruptive services of the year, and it received a Best E-Commerce Application nomination for the 2012 Crunchies Awards.

HouseTrip, a British clone of Airbnb, has raised $40 million in its third round of funding.

Like its American doppelganger, HouseTrip is community-driven marketplace for accommodation. Residents post their property on the site as available to rent, along with a profile, price, and reviews. Travelers looking for a place to stay search through the listings and book a rental for their trip. This model benefits the host, who can generate extra income, as well as the visitors who stand to gain more meaningful, personal travel experiences.

“We empower thousands of property owners to make money from their homes and investment properties,” said founder and CEO Arnaud Bertrand. “In Europe, this is of great importance as the economic crisis has impacted so many lives across the Continent. HouseTrip also empowers guests to travel to destinations where they can fully immerse themselves in local culture by literally living like a local, and we reduce the cost of their experience by providing better value.”

Bertrand started HouseTrip after he struggled to book a rental for a getaway to Scotland with his wife. The available options for finding and booking accommodation were inconvenient and outdated, consisting mostly of classified ads and requiring phone calls and wire transfers.

Since then, HouseTrip has built up a selection of 130,000 properties in 15,000 destinations, and the company expects by the end of the year to have helped book more than 3 million nights’ sleep. It has focused its efforts on Europe, and has options ranging from Italian villas to New York apartments.

The investor team also hews closely to European roots. This Series C was led by Accel Partners, with previous investors Balderton Capital and Index Ventures also participating.

“We are a European centric business,” Bertrand said. “Europe is the largest market globally for vacation rentals, and 60% of Europeans travel within Europe. This is the first time Europe’s three largest VCs have come together to back a European player.”

While many Airbnb user list their primary residence, Housetrip targets properties that are consistently available to rent. The team also offers management and calendar tools for the hosts, so they can keep track of their bookings and offer a reliable alternative to visitors.

“Booking entire properties requires the same traveller to scour multiple niche listings sites or to call travel agents, real estate companies and even homeowners directly,” said Accel Partner partner Sonali De Rycker. “Often the same guests have to send a substantial deposit before they even have sight of the property with little guarantee or recourse if the property is not as advertised. The better the service HouseTrip offers to guest, the more likely they are to make a booking which in turn means better business for the hosts – these network effects only reinforce themselves as the company scales.”

This investment will be used to fuel the company’s international expansion. This brings its total funding to almost $60 million, following a $17 million Series B last November.

HouseTrip is based in London, with offices in Switzerland and Portugal.