Hotel Quickly's last minute mobile rates not so exclusive

Hotel Quickly is the Hotel Tonight ripoff here in Asia.  Both have super sexy UX and pride themselves on fantastic deals at the last minute.  Every day at 12 noon local time, Hotel Quickly pushes out several hotel deals in key Asian destinations.  If you read the mobile FAQ on how it works, Hotel Quickly claims that its deals are exclusive to their app users.  I decided to put their claim to the test today.

For a one night stay arriving in Singapore tonight, Hotel Quickly offered six hotels.  Two were called 'prime', two were labeled as 'design', and the last two were classified as 'comfy'.  I decided to compare the rates and availability of these six hotels across some other popular mobile booking sites in Asia . . . specifically Agoda, Booking, and Expedia.

Here are the takeaways.  Keep in mind I compared all rates inclusive of taxes and service charges, the "all in" price.

1) Hotel Quickly (green bar in graph below) fell short of defending their value proposition, at least for today.  Their app didn't offer even one hotel that had rates lower than any other OTA's mobile app.  Even the featured hotel they recommended, identified by shaking the phone, was only on par with Agoda and Booking's rates.

2) Expedia (yellow bar in graph below) lost out in some way with four of these six hotels.  They didn't have availability or relationships with Hotel Royal at Queens or Grand Park Orchard, so these weren't bookable at all.  They did show availability at Amara and Ramada, but their rates were $30-40 SGD more than their competitors.  Yes, I made sure I compared the same room types.

Hotel Quickly has come out with aggressive marketing communications to create consumer perception that their rates are exclusive over other booking channels.  They also have a very clever kickback technique, including a referral program that snags users 10 USD in credits when friends make a booking with the user's unique invite code.  Although the average last minute consumer is less likely to compare prices across multiple mobile apps, Hotel Quickly needs to up the game on their so called exclusive rates if it wants to create real and sustainable value for its app users.