Interview: HotelTonight's CEO on user photos, copycats and Priceline


Skift Take

As a first-mover, HotelTonight is in an enviable position. The company faces competition from imitators, including big brands, but there absolutely will be more than one winner in the same-day booking sector. There is a whole big world out there.
Sam Shank, co-founder and CEO of same-day booking app HotelTonight, knows more than a little about user-generated content since he signed-on a decade ago to head up hotel-review site TravelPost, and was still around when it was sold to SideStep. HotelTonight today updated its iOS app to include a "Snap Your Stay" feature, enabling hotel guests to submit realistic photos after their stays of the guest room, hotel lobby, or whatever shot or angle they want to take. These user-generated photos supplement a mix of HotelTonight-taken and hotel-submitted photography of each property, and hopefully will depict properties in the HotelTonight lineup, warts and