Jared Simon on business and Russia

HotelTonight has entered the Russian market this week. In this regard, Jared Simon, founder and operating director of the company (COO), flew to Moscow and gave an interview to several Russian publications. At the moment, Jared is also the face of the company, providing the main contacts with the press and the public.

HotelTonight is a hotel booking service that allows you to book discounted rooms just before your stay, literally from the door of the hotel.

Last year, the company won the Crunchies contest in the “Best Service on Request” nomination. In an interview, Jared said that the company had planned to enter our market since the summer of 2014. First of all, due to the size of the hotel services market in the country (more than 150 billion rubles for booking hotels in 2014, besides, 40% annual growth). Moreover, in Russia there is a very high percentage of smartphone penetration (about 45%), which in itself is a fundamental condition for business for HotelTonight. HotelTonight is a pure mobile application, they have no web interface. The company's website serves mainly as an information portal.

The entrepreneur also noted a flimsy Russian mentality, resulting in spontaneous trips, on which the business of their company was built. In other countries, people are less spontaneous.
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The work starts with Moscow and St. Petersburg, with further expansion to the million-plus cities, the traditional resort cities and the cities of the Golden Ring. In Moscow, a startup agreed with four dozens of hotels of the most diverse class. Approximately the same in St. Petersburg. Moreover, we note that HotelTonight only works with carefully selected hotels, which can significantly reduce the time costs of searching. To ensure interaction with hotels, the company hired Russian specialists.

Around the world, HotelTonight currently employs about 180 people. 80 - in San Francisco. 50 support staff around the world. There are also offices in London, Paris, Berlin, Toronto and Sydney. With our country, the startup will work in 29 countries around the world. Although so far, there are no Asian countries in the team’s portfolio, but Jared Simon noted possible prospects for entering Asian markets as well.

There will never be a web version of the product, and for Russian users HotelTonight applications will be written from scratch.

The heart of the company's business model is the multilateral b2b + b2c platform.

The company passed four rounds of investments worth more than $ 80 million. First investors: Battery Ventures, First Round Capital and Accel Partners.

In connection with the current world political hysteria in our cause, many foreign companies are not very eager to come to Russia, and many who were present before that are eager to leave. The HotelTonight team believes that the risks are justified regardless of their reality, and prefers to take a market share at the campfire while we are not very close. Today, the main interests of the company in Russia are to attract users and hotels, and the formation of high-quality relationships at all levels of interaction. So this fiscal year of the Russian part of the service is unlikely to bring any significant revenues.