For my company’s holiday party last week, Ashley and I decided to give HotelTonight a try for the very first time. I’d been following the app for awhile now, but hadn’t quite found the perfect reason for me to even use it. Since our holiday party was in San Francisco and I didn’t feel like driving back south afterwards, I thought that we could not only get a room to stay in following the party, but also have a place to get ready with the girls as well.

As a first time user, I found it to be fairly easy. It was simple to enter in all of my information and book the room that I wanted without any hassle (except for the part where we forgot to confirm and had to go through the process a second time.)

Here are my biggest takeaways from using HotelTonight:

• The later you wait to book a room, the cheaper it is. However, you should be weary that some rooms will get snatched up quickly and you might not want to wait. It’s important to just set a boundary for yourself as to how long you’re willing to wait to book.
• This app is perfect for non-planners. As someone who is a planner and likes to be thrifty I kept checking the app every half hour to see if prices would change. It was kind of stressful. However, if you’re someone who likes to be adventurous and do things on the fly, HotelTonight is probably your dream app.
• It’s important to figure out how much you’re willing to pay based on what you need. For us, Ashley and I decided that we just needed one bed and a bathroom. We got just that and a whole side of mirrors for us to use to get ready as a bonus for just $200. We really didn’t care to have any extra ammenities like a place that has a pool or a spa or living area within the room.

Using HotelTonight the night of my party was a really great idea. If I had to use HotelTonight in another city, that might make me a little bit nervous given that I might not know the neighborhoods as well and planning a trip in advance, you kind of want to have those details set prior. With that said, I would probably use HotelTonight again for events like the one that I just had. I also think they’d make for the perfect spontaneous date night!

PS: Does anyone know why their tagline “I want tonight to last forever” is so seductive? Just me?