Today, we have a guest post from Sam Shank, CEO and Co-Founder of HotelTonight, on integrating with v.zero and scaling internationally.
By Sam Shank, CEO and Co-Founder, HotelTonight
Before HotelTonight, there was no last-minute booking solution out there. If you had a change of plans, or were feeling spontaneous, you’d often find no vacancy or rates that were prohibitively high.
We set out to build a solution. Realizing that people who were booking at the last minute were more likely to be on their smartphones than sitting in front of a computer, we focused exclusively on mobile and built the HT app. This has really paid off, as consumers are increasingly shifting to mobile to do everything from ordering food to getting a ride to booking a hotel.
But just as we wanted to give our customers flexibility and choice in how and when they book their hotel rooms, we also wanted to give them simple, speedy options for payment. We utilized Braintree from day one, which gave us the ability to offer sub-10-second hotel bookings - and the fastest way to book a hotel. We knew that Braintree had bet big on mobile early on, and that they added the flexible tools we needed to grow our mobile-first business. Integrating with Braintree’s v.zero SDK was not only a quick and painless process, but it also enabled us to accept a wide range of payments, from credit and debit cards to PayPal and Apple Pay. Not only did this benefit our customers, but it helped us fill more hotel rooms at the last minute. Just by adding PayPal, which v.zero enables with a single integration, we saw immediate customer benefits and utilization, and month-over-month we’re seeing 30% growth in bookings that utilize PayPal alone.
In addition to giving us flexibility in how we accept payments, Braintree has also helped us grow and scale into new markets. Within a year of launch, we started thinking about international expansion, and needed to sort out how we’d accept payments across multiple countries and numerous currencies. Braintree’s flexible payment platform enabled us to expand without having to worry about payments at all, so we could stay laser-focused on expanding and providing the best hotels at the absolutely best last-minute rates.
Today, HotelTonight is in 27 countries, working with over 15,000 hotel partners and has 12M+ downloads – and all of our payments flow securely through Braintree, whether they’re in the US dollar, the Mexican peso or the Swiss Franc. Braintree is a great partner and collaborator, and has helped us deliver an even better, more seamless experience to our customers.
Interested in hearing more? Watch our video case study: