Amenitiz, the Barcelona-based startup which has become one of the fastest-growing “Hospitech” companies in Europe, has secured €6.5 million in seed funding from some of the world’s most successful technology investors, including Point-Nine, Backed and renowned business angels like Avi Meier (Travelperk), Matt Robinson (GoCardless) and Carlos Gonzales (ex-GoCardless). In addition, Jean-Christophe Taunay (ex-Vend, now CRO at TravelPerk)is also joining Arthur Waller (ex-PriceMatch, now Pennylane) as an independent board member. This new funding will enable the company to expand into new markets and accelerate growth towards its ambition to become the world’s leading hospitech platform.
It has become inevitable for independent hoteliers to build their online presence. While Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) used to represent a minority share of independent hotels’ bookings 10 years ago, their market share has grown by 50% between 2013 and 2019 and can now represent up to 71% of an independent hotel’s online bookings today. To counterbalance OTA’s domination, hotels have high incentives to enable direct bookings on their own website. But while OTAs have invested heavily in creating a seamless booking experience on their own platform, making reservations on many independent hotel’s websites is still a frustrating process, costing hoteliers thousands of euros in commission and lost margins.
Amenitiz uses this dramatic change in the market as a wedge to build a complete Operating System for independent hoteliers, B&Bs and cottages in Europe. Starting with their online presence, providing them with a website and a channel manager, but also extending into their operations with a very easy-to-use PMS (Property Management System) that hoteliers use daily to automate their tasks like invoicing and their payment processes. As it grows, the company plans to extend its offering with additional services like revenue management in order to offer independent hoteliers services that were up until now available only to large hotels.
Amenitiz CEO Alexandre Guinefolleau said: “In this digital age, we believe running your hotel and developing a strong online presence should be as easy as booking a trip on Airbnb – if not easier. Unfortunately, as hoteliers become more and more reliant on online distribution, they often realise that their current tech stack -if any- is unnecessarily time-consuming, expensive and burdensome. We’re looking to change that by rebuilding the hotelier’s operating system and becoming a no-brainer for any hotelier in Europe.”
In this latest round, the company is also being supported by existing investors such as Otium Capital, Arthur Waller (Pennylane), Nicolas Celier (Ring Capital) and Sebastien Venturini (Weekendesk), who back market-changing companies including Smartbox, TheFork, Matera and Payfit.
Since its commercial launch in 2018 by CEO Alexandre Guinefolleau, CRO Emmanuelle Guinefolleau and co-founder Frédéric Cadet, Amenitiz has helped over 3’000 properties in 28 different countries and now has over 100 employees.
After growing over 4x in 2020, one of the most challenging years for the hospitality and travel industries, this new injection of funding will allow Amenitiz to triple the size of its team in the coming years helping them address strong demand in the French, Italian, and Spanish markets while augmenting their technology offering including a focus on payment and a strong partner ecosystem.
Louis Coppey, partner at Point-Nine, said: “We’ve been partnering with industry-specific SaaS companies since the inception of Point Nine. From Clio in the legal space in 2011 to Nexhealth in the medical space more recently, we’re strong believers that software companies can bring significant value to an industry and even sometimes impact its competitive dynamics. We’ve been impressed by Alexandre, Emmanuelle and Frederic’s industry expertise and by the depth of their long term vision. We’re very much looking forward to supporting them bring one of the oldest industries in Europe online”.