Wall Street Journal: Acquiring the site would give Airbnb a way to show investors more growth potential and demonstrate it can branch out beyond its core.

The potential move also points to Airbnb’s desire to show it can move beyond its reputation for renting out quirky homes and apartments into something more like a full-service travel website.

Hotel Tonight, founded in 2010 and based in San Francisco, culls unsold inventory from hotel chains and offers discounted rooms to travelers seeking last-minute deals.

The company was last valued at $463 million in March 2017, in a $131 million funding round. The site’s customer base and revenue have been expanding rapidly since then, and its valuation could be significantly higher now, though it isn’t clear by how much.

Merging private companies is challenging in part because of a lack of public valuation benchmarks. But a purchase of Hotel Tonight would represent a big strategic move, and there is no guarantee it would succeed.

Airbnb has struggled with adding enough inventory of new homes in hot markets for travel and faces growing competition from rivals, including Expedia and Booking Holdings Inc., moving into home and apartment rentals.