HotelTonight

INTRO

HotelTonight is a mobile-first hotel booking app, later acquired by Airbnb in 2019. As Lead Designer, I played a key role in its transformative growth, helping scale the app from 1 million to over 10 million downloads.

My role spanned branding, marketing, B2B interface design, ad creative and strategy, and mobile user experience, ensuring a simple and intuitive platform for both travelers and hotel partners.

ROLE

Mobile UI/UX

Web & Email Design

B2B Application UI/UX

Marketing & Ad Creative

Front-End & Back-End Development

See project

Client/Context

HotelTonight

Year

2011-2013

10M

Downloads

(From 2011-2013)

300%

Increase in Revenue

(From 2012-2013)

$450M

Acquisition by Airbnb

(2019)

From 1M to 10M: Driving HotelTonight’s Growth

Two taps and a swipe

I joined HotelTonight shortly after its Series A, when the app had around 1 million downloads. By the time I left, the company had closed Series D and surpassed 10 million downloads, winning an Apple Design Award in the process.

As Lead Designer, I led design on everything from the consumer-facing mobile UI/UX to internal and B2B web tools for market managers, hoteliers and photographers to brand, marketing, ad creative, websites, infographics, apparel, offices and more.

In 2019, Airbnb acquired HotelTonight for $400 million, solidifying its place as a game-changer in the hospitality industry.

Various iterations of HotelTonight's mobile UI

Mama didn't raise no fool

The HotelTonight "Voice"

A key ingredient in HotelTonight’s disruptive success was its hip, irreverent brand voice and tone. Part of my role, was to ensure this distinct personality was woven into every aspect of design, from bespoke splash screens on each new release to neon-lit thank-you cards for hoteliers.

The voice could take the form of infographics and region-specific ad creative or in a less-sexy way fail-safe email formatting to ensure even hotels with fax-only systems received booking details that looked clean. A few examples I really enjoy included a digital mint on your pillow in the booking confirmation email with a randomly included inspirational phrase and playful messaging, like our famous FAQ answer: "Mama didn’t raise no fool."

The Product is in the Business

Disruptive mechanics

HotelTonight didn’t just provide hoteliers with a slick mobile interface for listing unsold inventory (though we did). We gave them real-time control over their margins, inventory, special features, and hotel details. Hoteliers could see the immediate impact on our dynamic bidding system which gave a visual indication of HotelTonight’s proprietary algorithm would react and impact the likelihood the property would show up to a guest.

This was a clear departure from the rigid, one-sided inventory agreements imposed by larger booking platforms like Orbitz and Expedia, which also typically had no mobile UI. Instead, HotelTonight gave the power to hoteliers with unprecedented flexibility. Not just control but equity.

This extended to everything. From the extranet that market managers use, to the portal that HotelTonight contracted photographers uploaded photos to the back-end was intentional and reflected the customer UX as well.