Amazon Local has expanded its hotel bookings. Hotels can now offer rooms at published rates in ongoing listings; previously they were limited to discounted rooms and finite sales. According to a report on Skift, "[i]n the past couple of weeks Amazon Local updated its iOS and Android apps and began on-boarding a handful of independent hotels offering their rooms at published rates, which is a big departure from the steeply discounted, distressed inventory that has been the mainstay of Amazon Local over the past couple of years....Amazon is trying to give hotels the flexibility to work with Amazon on an ongoing basis and not just when they have rooms to sell at 40 percent or 52 percent cheaper than published rates when the hotels are feeling the pinch. Among the hotels that have loaded their published rates, availability and photos through the Amazon Local extranet over the last week or plan to do so in the coming days are sister properties Ledges Hotel and The Settlers Inn in Hawley, Pennsylvania, as well as Ocean Place Resort & Spa in Long Branch, New Jersey, and Salishan Spa & Golf Resort in Gleneden Beach, Oregon."

The rest of the story: Amazon’s New Hotel Business Begins to Take Shape by Dennis Schaal (Skift).