HotelTonight Founder Sam Shank Leaves Airbnb After an Extended Stay

HotelTonight founder and CEO Sam Shank helped build the fastest and easiest to use hotel booking app in the world — initially focused on guests booking last-minute and same-day hotel rooms, sometimes from the local bar — but he hung around Airbnb for three years and eight months after the short-term rental site acquired the business, and Thursday was his last day there.

A serial entrepreneur — SideStep, TravelPost and DealBase before HotelTonight — and investor, who Skift dubbed among a fab five quintet of travel angel investors in 2013, Shank announced on LinkedIn that he left Airbnb, and would be taking some time off before figuring out what to do next outside of the travel industry.

Consider the context of 2010 when Shank and co-founders Jared Simon and Christopher Bailey