Three months after revealing a switch from its original vision of a trip planning site, Groupize has unveiled its hotel booking service for groups.
The system, which replaces the original group trip planning service which originally launched in 2010 [TLabs Showcase - Groupize], allows groups to search for and book up to 25 rooms at a property.
Groupize has enlisted up to 25,000 hotels to take part in the service.
Users can mix the number of people heading on a trip with the number of rooms required and being shared. Once the results are returned (similar to other search systems), the group planner selects a hotel and holds a block of rooms before allowing guests to claim an individual room.
The group travel category is estimated to be worth around $31 billion a year.
Despite kicking off as a planning service, in October last year, president and CEO, Charles de Gaspe Beaubien admitted VCs and angels "weren't ready to believe in us. They wanted us to prove the technology first...".
Despite this the company still managed to attract a "few million dollars" in revenue in 2011 and achieve profitability.
De Gaspe Beaubien now says:
"In spite of the innovation in other segments of travel, the group travel business has changed very little in recent years.
"Groupize has been developed from the ground up using the latest technologies to provide a more efficient way of booking group trips, which until now has primarily been done offline or via RFPs."
Here is a clip: