HAVING extended its booking window from 48 hours to seven days last year, last-minute room booking app HotelQuickly has embarked on a brand rejuvenation strategy to strengthen its foothold in Asia-Pacific.
The rebranding is among a number of strategic initiatives for the mobile-only app to “maximise (its) competitive advantage over OTAs” and “unlock more spontaneous travel opportunities in Asia-Pacific”, HotelQuickly’s co-founder and COO Christian Mischler toldTTG Asia e-Daily.
As part of rebranding efforts to mark its third anniversary on the startup stage, the relaunched HotelQuickly app now showcases a brighter color palette, a more streamlined booking flow as well as fresh features that allow users to make multi-room bookings, view available offers by location via enhanced map functions, and control price display settings to include or exclude taxes and HotelQuickly credit.
Among the new capabilities on the app are Special Gift offers, which rewards guests who book their stays through the app with free vouchers, token treats and value-added services such as airport transfers.
As well, the new HotelQuickly logo now sports a key icon in place of its previous pillow imagery.
HotelQuickly in February entered into Japan by acquiring domestic booking app Tonight, which was a “logical step” for the company to capitalise on Japan’s increasing popularity among Asian travellers due to its more relaxed visa restrictions and growing LCC connections, according to Mischler.
With the addition of Japan to its portfolio, HotelQuickly now boasts 16 countries and a network of more than 12,000 hotels in Asia-Pacific since going live in March 2013.
Collaboration with hotel partners to sell their unused inventory continues to rank highly on the startup’s agenda, said Mischler. “We will continue to invest more into product development to make our app more useful for our members, and at the same time roll out a number of innovative features for our hotel partners to allow more targeted use of HotelQuickly so that it best helps them to optimise their RevPAR,” he shared.
Mischler revealed that the startup is currently working on a Series B fundraising round, and expects to accelerate its expansion on all fronts throughout 2016 and beyond.
