WorldMate iPhone app debuts sales pitches disguised as hotel alerts

Itinerary management service WorldMate debuted “hotel price alerts” on its updated iPhone app, but actually they are marketing pitches urging users to book hotels at lower rates through WorldMate.

But, the commercial nature of the alerts doesn’t mean that they aren’t valuable.

WorldMate enables travelers to email their confirmations, including hotel bookings, to the company so users can manage their itineraries.

As WorldMate notes in a blog post today about the free hotel-price alerts service, it analyzes your existing hotel booking, whether it was booked through an InterContinental toll-free number or Booking.com, and sends a hotel price alert when it finds a lower price for the same room, a reduced rate for a similar room nearby, or a comparable rate for “a much better room” in the neighborhood.

The beneficial thing to WorldMate is that all of the offers it sends users are for booking through WorldMate, which has a relationship with the Expedia Affiliate Network and can access 100,000 hotels globally.

The hotel-price alerts were previously available through WorldMate emails, and this is the first time it is offered through an in-app experience.

Rebooking technology

One compelling element of the hotel price alerts is that WorldMate uses what it describes as patent-pending LinkCatch technology, which “captures  the cancellation policies and methods from your original hotel booking so that we can facilitate your cancelation with just a couple of clicks.”

So the WorldMate user doesn’t have to exit out of the app to cancel the initial booking where it was originally made, WorldMate states.

Of course, if the hotel guests are looking for loyalty points from a preferred hotel, then perhaps WorldMate’s hotel price alerts won’t convince them to rebook another property.