![\"iOS](\"http:\/\/gigaom2.files.wordpress.com\/2013\/05\/ios-snap-your-stay-66.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nBy relying on the smartphone’s built-in camera, the app for last-minute, day-of bookings is looking to enhance its carefully curated hotel choices with photo-based user reviews. Hotel Tonight\u00a0started asking for users for simple thumbs up or down reviews nine months ago and began sharing those responses<\/a> as “percentages of users who’d recommend this hotel” in September.<\/p>\n But the Snap Your Stay feature will add more information that a simple user recommendation. The new feature is sort of a guided scavenger hunt: users get a template with places to fill in six photos, with a request for specific highlights of the room you’re staying in an a “wild card” photo for something you liked about the hotel. The idea is for it to be simple and fast, with just a few taps on your phone.<\/p>\n Other travel and booking sites want user reviews, but the major ones, TripAdvisor’s, for example, require text input even in their mobile apps. And Yelp doesn’t even allow mobile reviews — you have to sit down at a computer to compose them.<\/p>\n Hence, Hotel Tonight’s attempt to stand out with photo-oriented reviews. This method allows users filling out reviews to avoid typing descriptions on their phone — and users reading them\u00a0don\u2019t have to wade through pages of text on their phone when they’re trying to make a last-minute hotel decision.\u00a0In addition to that, Shank says it’s a good way of only allowing reviews from people who’ve actually stayed at the hotel and booked through the app.<\/p>\n Because smartphone cameras are so good, Shank is confident that images submitted will be pretty high quality. But please, no Instagram photos: “We want Hotel Tonight photos to look different, don\u2019t want them to look vintage, or black and white, or like they’re from 1977. So we have a dimmer switch to brighten them up.” Which, Shank points out, is going to be good for indoor room photos.<\/p>\n Hotel Tonight, just over two years old, is now in 12 countries<\/a>, nearly 100 cities and has been downloaded to 5 million iOS and Android devices.<\/p>\n In addition to the photo-based room reviews, the app also plans to introduce on Wednesday guaranteed room rates: if you find a lower rate on another site, tell Hotel Tonight and you’ll get the dollar difference back in Hotel Tonight user credits.<\/p>\n Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:<\/strong><\/a>“We wanted people to put in more info about what they liked about that hotel, but we didn\u2019t think enterting a ton of text was the right paradigm for mobile,” said Hotel Tonight founder and CEO Sam Shank in a phone call this week. “We want it to be something you do during your stay, not after your stay.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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