No web version. According to Rebeca Minguela, head of the company, “flash It was born for two reasons: The future is real-time transactions. Before you had to move to one place, now you can do it from home and in the future you can do it from anywhere. Also, acquiring a user base on the internet is complicated, there are big players and if you want to buy terms like “hotel” it is very expensive. Attracting users in a new channel like mobile is more affordable for startups like us.”

Blink currently has more than 500,000 downloads, and while they don’t provide data on transactions made, “we have a pretty high percentage,” says Minguela. How does it work? With part of the 30-strong team dedicated to the commercial part, “we preselect hotels and make agreements with them. Every day before 11 a.m. they must enter the free spaces, with a discount percentage of at least 10% cheaper than other major platforms. This way we make sure we have the best price. And on that day, we only publish the four with the most discounts in each city, so hotels have that incentive to drop prices… It’s kind of an auction system.”

For the user this means: We save you time. “When the search returns a lot of hotels, you have to start searching, selecting, etc. We select the best based on quality, price, location and reviews.”

Blink has a presence in several European countries and understands that “people are a bit reluctant to transact on mobile phones”. To counter this, they suggest the Blink user invite a friend in exchange for a 15% discount. “We recommend the first reservation, because then they repeat themselves. We also have 24-hour customer service.”

company management