BeMyGuest, a Singapore-based tours and activities marketplace, has raised $800,000 seed after winning a TV startup competition.
The Start-UP Asia competition on regional station ChannelNews Asia saw BeMyGuest beat off more 150 companies and secure the funding led by TNF Ventures.
Additional investment has come via from TideSquare, Adrian Ong and Woon Shung Toon amongst others.
This fund will be used to scale operations in the region, starting with a new office in the Philippines.
The company is pursuing additional distribution partnerships and claims to be in talks with "well known GDSs", hotel chains, search engines and some banks in order to widen its reach.
In October 2013 the company raised a seed fund of $400,000 and says it is planning to close an additional series A round within the next 12 months.
Following the investment, Foo Jixun of GG Capital will join BeMyGuest as an advisor. Jixun also serves on the board of directors of other Asia travel brands such as Qunar, Tujia, and GrabTaxi (recently raised $15 million).
CEO of BeMyGuest, Clement Wong, says:
"Our aim is to place our free multi-award winning content and booking management technology, into the hands of as many local providers of tours and activities across Asia as possible, to capture the final frontier of online travel distribution – tours and activities."
Recent key hires in the company include:
- Sandra Ho (CFO), previously global head of finance at Wego
- Olalla Rey (director of partnerships and revenue management), previously in charge of hotel contracting of Latin American market at Expedia Inc
- Holger Jehle (CTO)
In January this year, BeMyGuest
acquired local competitor Indiescapes. Other players in Asia includes
WithLocals (TLabs
here),
myRealTrip (TLabs
here),
Voyagin, and
Triip.me (TLabs
here).
Blanca Menchaca, CMO, claims the company is seeing an 80% month on month increase in inventory on key destinations and about 25% month on month growth across all destinations. Menchaca also says the company is on track to hit the goal of 6,000 tours and activities by this year.
When asked about BeMyGuest's claim as "Southeast Asia’s market leader in the tours and activities space", Menchaca says:
"Of the Asian players who have operations in Asia, we are definitely the largest in terms of inventory and traffic, and compared to GetYourGuide and other US, EU based players we still lead in terms of inventory in SEA.
"We know this because we monitor the market very closely and also use Alexa to do analysis on the traffic sources of each regional competitor."
"Yes, we already have staff fully focusing in North Asia: China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc."
The company is planning to launch its mobile app this year.