When do you want to book a hotel? NOW

You want to book a hotel room now. This very minute. For tonight (or tomorrow at the latest). You can’t wait. It needs to be quick, and done on a phone. Enter Booking Now.

Two tap hotel booking

Booking Now is an offshoot of the Booking.com website, and an app designed for making hotel bookings for the same night or the next one (for stays of up to 30 nights). The idea is to make the process as simple as possible so you can do it as quickly as possible while still providing reviews, location access, and room details.

To use the app, you must enter your name, email address, and phone number. Then it prompts you for your credit card information. Maybe that’s ok if you are definitely sure you want to book a hotel through the app, but if you just want to browse it is annoying and intrusive.

The booking process goes as follows: chose a price range, enter the number of guests (currently you can only chose one or two guests), and add some filters (WiFi, breakfast, parking, etc). With this done, Booking Now will surface hotels in your area (using you phone’s GPS) within the specified price range. From there you can access all the reviews and hotel information from Booking.com so you can make an informed decision. The app apparently uses algorithms to determine the best hotels for your needs based both on the criteria you’ve selected, as well as previous places you’ve stayed.

Quick but expensive

Booking Now is a slick app that strips the booking process back to basics to allow you to quickly and easily make that reservation. There are a few drawbacks. Compared to the Booking.com website, the hotels are significantly more expensive in Booking Now. One hotel was $100 dollars on the website and $150 in the app. That’s a hell of a difference. It was also more expensive than the Booking.com app.

While you can choose different hotels, you can’t chose room types – you are presented with only one option.

Very last minute booking

Booking Now is definitely a more attractive, streamlined, and user friendly experience app, and the booking process is so much quicker and straightforward than the Booking.com app. If you’re looking for the cheapest deal then this isn’t the app for you. But if you’re desperate to find a room (or you’re really lazy) and you’re willing to pay more then Booking Now is just what you’ve been waiting for.