Amazon will launch a hotel booking service next year, report says

Amazon.com is making lots of moves these days. Along with its upcoming brick-and-mortar store, it is apparently working on a travel site.

The e-commerce giant is planning a hotel-booking service, according to a report today from Skift. The service will feature a selection of hotels within a few hours’ drive from New York City, Los Angeles, and Seattle, and will likely go live by Jan. 1, 2015, according to the report.

Hotels will be able to load room availability, photos, and other information into a website to feed into Amazon’s booking service, the report said. Amazon will then notify the hotels about bookings by email. Amazon will take a 15 percent cut of revenue from the bookings.

Moreover, it appears that Amazon is looking to carefully build out this service, starting with a few hand-selected hotels and properties in each area. The travel pages will also be filled out with editorial content about attractions and activities in the area that visitors can enjoy.

Amazon would be jumping into a market that is already very competitive, although the sheer size of its customer base would make it an attractive business partner for hotels and properties.

The service wouldn’t be all that surprising for Amazon, given that the Amazon Local site already offers hotel reservations. Amazon’s careers site currently lists several available positions within its Amazon Local division that ask for experience in the hotel industry, and those jobs are located in the cities mentioned above (although it’s not clear whether this new travel site will be part of Amazon Local or not).