Last-minute hotel booking app HotelTonight is getting a fun update — from now until September 8, users can enter a contest to visit the Los Angeles set of Silicon Valley while the HBO show shoots its third season.
To compete, you’ll need to redeem the code “HBONOW” in the HotelTonight app. Even if you don’t win, you can still swipe right or tap the globe icon to bring up hotel suggestions tied to different HBO shows like Ballers (Miami), Girls (New York City) and Veep (Washington, D.C.).
It’s all part of a promotional partnership with HBO’s on-demand video app HBO NOW. CEO Sam Shank said that while HotelTonight has collaborated on a “smaller scale” with other on-demand services like Uber, it hasn’t done “these deeper partnerships” before. And he said there are several more in the works.
(I suppose I should also mention that TechCrunch Disrupt has been featured on Silicon Valley, as if you didn’t already know that. So consider it mentioned.)
Shank said that he recently tasked a team led by HotelTonight marketing manager Kyle Tibbitts with finding partnerships that help the app reach a new audience. Not that the company is ruling out traditional ad campaigns, as well — Shank noted that HotelTonight has raised plenty of money, and he said, “I wouldn’t make any conclusions about our media plans based on this.”
Tibbitts added that pairing HotelTonight and HBO NOW seems like a “very natural use case” — you might book a weekend getaway through HotelTonight. If you want to use some of that time to catch up on your favorite HBO show, well you can, thanks to HBO Now.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvv-xKw7qjs&w=560&h=315]
