Skift Take

Priceline's partnership with General Motors is the next step in same-day, mobile hotel bookings. As other booking services enter into such partnerships, it will only fuel the trend. One remaining question is HotelTonight, which is your favorite car manufacturer?

Priceline and General Motors have partnered to turn Chevrolet vehicles into a mobile hotel-booking app.

That’s right. Passengers in vehicles speeding along a highway or parked on a dirt road in the boonies can book hotels from Priceline right from within the car.

There are two ways to do it, and the first one is being gradually rolled out early this year. That is, Onstar customers can press the blue Onstar button in their vehicles to connect to Priceline agents who will do the searching or booking of nearby hotels.

In addition, consumers driving app-capable vehicles can download a new Priceline app from the Chevrolet App Shop in order to peruse Pricelne’s hotel inventory. That capability, to be unveiled this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, will be introduced later in 2014.

Actually, there are three ways: You can use your smartphone as you always have, too. Just make sure to pull to the side of the road.

“Hotels are one of the most requested categories GM’s OnStar customers seek information about while traveling, and we see an immense opportunity to fulfill a strong consumer need,” said Brett Keller, chief marketing Office of Priceline.com. “We built a custom priceline.com app for Chevolet owners that gives last-minute bookers an ability to locate, compare, and book their preferred hotel in seconds with the touch of a button.”

Priceline was the first online travel agency several years ago to point to changed consumer behavior where they were booking hotels once they arrived at a destination instead of in advance, and this new in-vehicle app capability really fits into this trend.

Priceline says it is the first online travel agency to enter into such a partnership with an automobile manufacturer.

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Tags: apps, priceline

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