Last-Minute Hotel App Shakeout Heats Up as HotelQuickly Lays Off 10 Employees
Photo Credit: Thailand-based HotelQuickly has fired 10 marketing employees as it reworks its customer-acquisition strategy. HotelQuickly
Skift Take
Last-minute hotel-booking apps, from HotelQuickly to HotelTonight, are reworking their customer-acquisition or unit-economics strategies now that all of the major players, from Booking.com and Kayak to Expedia, have introduced comparable products. The current phase may portend slower, but more sustainable growth.
Is this just part of the maturation process or a shakeout in the tonight-only and last-minute hotel-app sector?
Four months after U.S.-based HotelTonight layed off about 20 percent of its staff in a quest for profitability, Thailand-headquartered HotelQuickly fired 10 marketing team members, which was more than 10 percent of its staff prior to its acquisition last month of the Japanese last-minute app, Tonight.
Tomas Laboutka, HotelQuickly's co-founder and CEO, says the app's coverage has expanded from six countries to 16 in Asia-Pacific and the layoffs were part of a "strategy adaption," which including consolidating teams in its Bangkok headquarters to focus more on product marketing as the company "reprioritizes our user-acquisition processes.
