There are over 700,000 hotels, bed & breakfast and vacation rentals in Europe and about 80% of these are independent properties of 50 rooms or less. In times of increasing digitisation of the industry, these smaller properties find managing their operations extremely complex. Now that travel is coming back in a big way after two years as we emerge from the Covid crisis, it has become extremely important to address the issue and stay in the game.
This is where the Barcelona-based all-in-one Property Management System (PMS) for independent hotels and B&Bs Amenitiz steps in. The startup has now raised $30 million funding to combat the problem faced by smaller hoteliers head-on. The Series A round was led by global venture investor Eight Roads and saw the participation of Chalfen Ventures and existing investors Point9, Otium and Backed.
The round comes on the back of its earlier funding of $7 million in a seed round in September last year.
The extra capital will come in handy as it plans to expand into new European markets, recruit over 200 people for its Barcelona hub, and roll out additional products to its platform to keep on making the life of hoteliers easier, such as RMS and Distribution.
Founded in 2018 by Alexandre and Emmannuelle Guinefolleau and Frederic Cadet, the platform offers all-in-one solution to centralise all the tools an independent hotelier could need in one place, a ‘Shopify for hotels', while helping them boost direct bookings and reducing their dependence on online travel agents.
The company re-builds the entire stack into a fully integrated and easy-to-use operating system for hoteliers. It takes care of their online presence, provides them with a website and a channel manager, but also extends into their operations with an easy-to-use PMS that hoteliers use daily to automate their tasks like guest management, communication and invoicing. The startup has also launched a payment module dubbed AmenitizPay to make the time-consuming task of payment collection and reconciliation faster.
It also offers a marketplace - a central location for hotels to discover and implement a variety of additional tools provided by third-party vendors.
Alexandre Guinefolleau, CEO, Amenitiz, said: “As hoteliers awaken in a post-covid world, they find themselves even more reliant on their digital presence and online distribution to rebuild and grow their business. Their current tech stack -if any- is incapable of dealing with today’s challenges and guest expectations. Amenitiz will empower independent hoteliers to master every aspect of running their properties and allow them to build a thriving business.”
The company which launched just before the Covid-19 pandemic currently supports over 4000 properties in 37 countries.
Lucile Cornet, partner, Eight Roads, and new Amenitiz board member, added: “Amenitiz has shown impressive momentum despite the pandemic. This shows how a 10x better product, which is intuitive and easy to use, can quickly achieve product-market fit in a sector that has seen very little innovation in the past few decades.”
Despite launching just before the Covid-19 pandemic, the company has scaled quickly to support over 4’000 properties in 37 countries.
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