Startup Alley Spotlight: Making travel more affordable through hotel switching

Travel Massive’s Startup Alley interview series continues with Nightly.travel – a startup that aims to offer more affordable travel through hotel switching.

David Ferreira is the CEO and Co-Founder of Nightly.travel. He previously worked for large global corporates including Expedia and Diageo, as well as an early career in strategy consulting. David is a member of Travel Massive London.

How did you get into the travel industry?

I’ve been traveling since I was 3 months old and my passion for travel started then. I have quite an international background having lived in Portugal, the US, Brazil, France, and now the UK. At the center of most of these moves was my desire to see more of the world.

It was only natural that when an opportunity came up to work at Expedia, I made the move into the travel industry. My role there was working in the B2B arm of the company, so it allowed me to see many different OTA (Online Travel Agency) and TMC (travel management company) models across the globe. I started to understand the main drivers of success for a modern OTA , giving me the confidence to run my own online travel agency now.

Tell us more about Nightly.travel and how you came up with the idea?

Nightly.travel is the brainchild of my co-founder, Santiago Navarro. He was frustrated by the fact that hotel room rates fluctuate on a night by night basis – hotels charge different prices on different nights for the same room depending on demand. He found that by combining the better value nights in one hotel with the better value nights in a second, he was able to stay in 5-star hotels for 3-star prices and save money.

He created Nightly.travel in order to automate this process of looking for the best value nights in each hotel and creating the best value packages available for specific dates.

By hotel switching, travelers can save as much as 70 percent vs. staying in a single hotel.

That can be a massive saving in cities with high average room rates like San Francisco, Paris, Tokyo, or London.

What is unique about your product or service?

We are the first and only hotel booking site focused on hotel switching. With access to over 75,000 hotels around the world, everything we do is about providing greater value to our guests. Our proprietary hotel switching algorithm looks at fluctuations in room rates and finds the best value deals in one hotel and couples them with the best value deals in a second hotel.

Travelers can refine their search to choose how far their hotel switches are and what quality of hotels are paired together.

Switching allows travelers to save, enjoy upgrades to better quality hotels, and experience more of the cities they visit.

We find hotel switching particularly useful in finding cheap extended stay hotels, generally for stays of five nights or more in large expensive cities with lots of hotels for us to tap into.

How is your startup changing the future of travel?

Research shows travelers are moving away from hotels towards homestay sites like Airbnb not because they want to “live like locals”, but because they offer better value alternatives to hotels.

We can bring people back to hotels by showing that hotel switching offers a way to experience them for less.

This is a clear benefit to consumers, but there is also a benefit to hotels. They often find shoulder nights difficult to sell.

Under a traditional OTA model, travelers searching for a room at a hotel with the third night out of a three-night stay unavailable would be shown the hotel as “Sold Out”. Under our model, we can use the first two nights that are available and pair them with a single night at another hotel for the last night. Unlocking this partial availability is value added to hotels, and ultimately creates more staying options for travelers as well.

Is there another travel company that you admire? If so, why?

I admire Airbnb for their ability to change customer behavior. They were able to get people to feel comfortable to stay in a complete stranger’s house by building a value proposition that made it attractive to change behavior.

We are also changing travelers’ behaviors. It’s not easy, but it’s possible if the value proposition is strong enough. We have a new UX/UI (user experience/user interface) rolling out in a few months to more clearly convey our value proposition and savings messaging, and we’re working on ways to eliminate some of the friction inherent in hotel switching.

Partnerships we’re discussing include a transportation provider to move guests from one hotel to the other and a luggage transfer service to move bags from one hotel to the other while travelers are out and about enjoying their trips. Consumers are already used to switching through train splitting or connecting flights – hotel switching is just the next step.

Thanks for the insights, David!

See how Nighly.travel works:

Connect with David on Travel Massive and learn more about Nightly.travel.