Event Intelligence, formerly known as RateMate, is a startup based in Greater London that provides forward looking event information for the travel industry, primarily hotels.
Although most mid-sized and large cities, and even many small towns, compile searchable calendars of concerts, club dates, art exhibitions, conferences and conventions, sporting and other events, the company believes hotels currently lack comprehensive, accurate and timely event information.
Revenue managers and sales and marketing teams are collecting this information from several sources manually, spending valuable time on this process that could be spent on their core activities. Due to the lack of forward-looking event data, the hotel industry worldwide is missing out on an estimated €8 billion per year.
What problem does your business solve?
Our startup solves multiple problems:
For revenue managers, we give forward looking event data to identify, plan for- and act on compression dates. They are also using our data to make sense of past performance data (why did we end up with x% occupancy and y ADR? that week?).
For sales managers, we provide organizer contact data to proactively prospect events and organizers who have not yet appeared in their readerboard reports to help them shift business to their properties.
They are also using our information to get on websites of major events as bookable hotels and to see if there are any major events happening at the dates of RFPs that come in.
Names of founders, their management roles, and number of full-time paid staff?
Peter Gal – CEO & founder
Brendan Gawlik – COO
Nikolai Gaibovich – CTO
David Simon – Head of event content
Alex Barros – adviser
Number of full-time paid staff: four
Funding arrangements?
Until now, the only funding we have had has been from friends, family and angel investors and from the Startupwiseguys accelerator.
We recently closed a Funderbeam campaign, having collected €213,000 in indications to invest.
One of the biggest reasons we chose Funderbeam is that there is a secondary market on the platform for investors, an online “stock exchange” that provides liquidity to investors, unlike any other platforms.
We are also talking with several VCs in Europe to complete the €500,000 round.
Revenue model?
We provide a SaaS service with a monthly subscription fee.
Why do you think the pain point you’re solving is painful enough that customers are willing to pay for your solution?
We have 71 paying hotels from the majority of the global chains, including InterContinental, Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Kempinski, among others. Highgate Hotels (the largest hotel operator in Manhattan) is also our client.
External validation?
We are an alumnus of Startupwiseguys, the leading B2B accelerator in Europe.
Our adviser is Alex Barros, one of the most successful sales directors of Duetto and Siteminder.
Previous to setting up my own company, I worked for 5 years in the hotel industry, both in online sales and in consulting.
Tnooz view:
Large hotels and chains may see the value in comprehensive aggregated event information, as evidenced by Event Intelligence’s client list. There are also some nice added features, such providing contact information for prospecting purposes. But with so much free information out there -- just about every city of any size has a marketing organization that compiles forward-looking event information -- smaller operations with less money to burn are likely to require a more compelling argument to use the company’s paid service.