New App Allows for Same-Day Bookings in NYC

By Dillon Thompson  |  July 21, 2016 | 3:32pm
Photo: Oleg Nikishin/Getty
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Since the site’s creation in 2008, Airbnb has come to dominate a large portion of the lodging market in many major American cities. New York City hasn’t been any different—according to data website Inside Airbnb there are currently 38,810 total Airbnb listings in the greater NYC area alone.

That being said, Airbnb might finally have some competition in the Big Apple. Overnight, a booking app that began offering listings in Los Angeles earlier this year, has arrived in New York and seems poised to provide some healthy competition.

The site, which already has more than 400 registered hosts in the New York City area, differs itself from Airbnb by emphasizing same-day, last minute bookings. Essentially, Overnight is for the spontaneous and the procrastinators, as the app offers users with an easy way to pull of spur-of-the-moment reservations for the night.

Instead of going through a full search process, users simply drop a pin at their location, and the app finds available same-night listings in the same area. The simple, location-based system has already earned the site a number of comparisons to transportation apps like Uber and Lyft.

Prices on Overnight, which is also available for use in Austin, Texas and San Francisco, are generally comparable to those of Airbnb. For example, prices in New York currently range from $60-$100 per night for a private room, and $90-$220 per night for a full apartment.

There’s been no official word on how Overnight might attempt to counter the sort of discrimination issues Airbnb has been scrutinized for in recent months, however both services are likely in the same grey area when it comes to New York’s apartment listing policy, which technically doesn’t allow for the leasing of an apartment for any period under 30 days.

While the two apps are together in their potential violation of New York legal code, it seems they may be different enough in their offerings to exist simultaneously in major cities such as LA and New York.

Dillon Thompson is a travel intern with Paste and a student at the University of Georgia.

 
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