Yelp Leaps Into Hotel Bookings With New Hipmunk Partnership
Photo Credit: Yelp has the reviews and the SEO for hotels and other points of interest. Now it's adding booking. Skift
Skift Take
Getting more aggressive in hotels is a natural fit for Yelp, although it remains to be seen how far Yelp intends to take it.
With the Priceline Group and TripAdvisor entering the restaurant booking space with their acquisitions of OpenTable and Lafourchette, respectively, Yelp, which is mostly known for its user-generated shopping and restaurant reviews, is getting more aggressive in the hotel sector through a new partnership with Hipmunk.
Hipmunk became the only hotel provider on the Yelp platform, enabling Yelp users to book hotel stays on Yelp without leaving the website or Yelp apps.
When Yelp users view a hotel and select Book a Room/Show Prices they'll view the pricing details under a "powered by Hipmunk via Getaroom" icon and then can complete the hotel booking on Yelp.com or in Yelp apps.
In this example, Getaroom would be the merchant of record for the hotel transaction and would be responsible for customer service for Yelp users. Hipmunk has multiple such direct-bookin
