70 per cent of Hotels.com bookings from mobile are for single-night stays, and 89 per cent are for stays of two nights or less. Thats according to head of mobile user experience Andy Braxton, speaking today at the Mobile Travel & Tourism Summit.

The way travellers use smartphones is noticeably different, Braxton said – theyre looking to fulfill an urgent need, rather than research months ahead. The conversion rate of mobile users is lower than on desktop, he hinted, but for specific situations that rises significantly.

Another situation where mobile performs well is same day bookings, which account for 60 per cent of its mobile business. Its for this reason that Hotels.com foregrounded the deals for tonight section in the recent overhaul of its iOS app.

iOS, however, is only a small part of the picture. Though they might account for a larger share of traffic than other devices, there are just eight iPhone models, and five iPads. Hotels.com sees traffic from 3,170 different mobile devices, with 1,054 screen sizes and resolutions.

Going forward, Braxton said the solution to this issue lies in adaptive design – taking into account not just screen size but factors like connection strength, pixel density, and the probable use case.

Looking further forward still, the company has been working with Ford to launch a Hotels.com on the car makers AppLink in-car system. This app enables drivers to search for hotels en route to their destination, using voice commands. The booking itself is made by forwarding the user to a call centre, ensuring the process stays hands-free throughout.

When I tested the app at MWC in February, I was struck by the lack of location-based functionality. The search doesnt have any option to search for two-star hotels near me, and theres no integrated navigation to the hotel once a booking has been made.

“Its probably not the perfect use case, to be completely honest,” admitted Braxton. “But its an interesting challenge, and an opportunity to look at how we could work on this new platform.”

Plus, he added, all of the work that has been done on making voice commands work is reusable. Thats something that could be especially useful when it comes to wearables – which will only add to Hotels.coms long list of devices, each with their own attributes and use cases even more diverse than mobile.