Laterooms.com seeks to drive up app booking with exclusive deals

LateRooms.com has launched a discount incentive to drive bookings through its app.

LateRooms.com has launched a discount incentive to drive bookings through its app.

Its app-only rates give users access to discounts of 10-40% on publicly available deals.

The move has occurred in response to “increasingly spontaneous bookers” looking for late hotel deals, and a growing trend of people making bookings from mobile devices.

LateRooms.com said it has seen the proportion of traffic to its site via mobile devices increase by 25% since 2013 – with more than half of all visitors to the site coming through that channel – and cited that traffic through its mobile app is more than 80% higher than in May 2013. 

The company has also found that 40% of rooms booked through its mobile app are for stays on the same day, with almost 53% for stays within the next 48 hours.

The discounted rooms are available across the UK, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.

LateRooms.com chief operating officer, Alistair Rodger, said: “A large proportion of our consumers are comfortable making late travel plans, and our hotel partners often have rooms available at short notice or quieter periods at particular times of the week or year. 

“By marrying our mobile app, CRM system data, and hotels’ desire to promote specific offers to targeted segments, we’re bringing a new world of bespoke, personalised rates to the late consumer and providing our hotel partners with another, more sophisticated way of providing targeted deals.” 

Richard Grosvenor, head of rooms management for MacDonald Hotels & Resorts, said: “Since using the mobile app only rates functionality, we’ve seen an encouraging growth in business as it allows us to incentivise bookings with discounts when we want or need them. 

“They’re also giving our hotels great enhanced exposure on the LateRooms.com mobile app.”

Rodger added: “There’s an element of urgency and spontaneity in mobile bookings and we want to encourage this ‘here and now’ attitude by giving customers exactly what they want – the right availability, the right price and the right hotel.”