OTA Insight, which provides business intelligence to the hospitality industry for revenue optimization, has announced a $20 million funding round.
The funding for the London-based company was led by Eight Roads Ventures and F-Prime Capital Partners.
According to Gino Engels, co-founder and CCO at OTA Insight, the capital infusion from the two investor groups was prompted in part by the tech company’s US expansion last year, where Eight Roads Ventures sister business F-Prime Capital Partners is also based and, partly by OTA Insight’s future growth plans.
“Since there is strong demand in the markets where we’re already located and F-Prime is based out of the US, it was a match for us and a chance to pursue a massive global growth opportunity with a partner based in our home market."
Eight Roads Ventures’ partner Michael Treskow will also join OTA Insight’s board of directors, a move that Engels explains will provide additional guidance in the tech startups next growth phase.
“Michael brings expertise in how to keep a company scalable, focus on growing volume and never lose the vision that has gotten us to where we are today."
Currently, OTA Insight works with 16,000 properties across 134 countries. With this additional round of funding, the firm is aiming to double that number over the next several years, although Engels declined to specify an exact timeframe. However, he did point out that all parties are expecting the company's current growth trajectory to transform from hyper-rapid client acquisition to a more sustainable model; the company launched in 2013 with 30 properties, shot up to 500 in 2014 and then again to nearly 2,000 in 2015.
Targets are clients at both ends of the spectrum, with a heavy focus on hotels that already have sophisticated revenue and distribution management system in place as well as properties of 20 to 30 keys that can’t afford a revenue manager.
“In both cases, we want to make sure they have the right business intelligence in place to optimize their properties."
The expansion plan also extends to new markets; the new round of financing will also lend itself to OTA Insight moving next into Asia Pacific. But such ambitious development will also require bolstering staff levels and already, the company is looking to add to its business development and marketing staff in addition to further building up the engineer team at its data hub in Ghent.
More engineers mean more data. As the company aims to increase its client list, the startup is also planning to add to its product offerings. Engels says:
“We’ve gathered a lot of data from public information and internal information from the hotels themselves.
“We have a massive amount of data to work with and we’re using AI and machine learning to identify trends before they happen to make sure our customers are always one step ahead.”
Trend spotting, he adds, will focus on booking patterns, seasonality and source market identification, particularly as they relate to revenue and distribution. Today, OTA Insight monitors close to 200 distribution channels, ranging from OTAs to metasearch engines to various branded channels and capturing data from those outlets as well.
Engels points out:
There really aren’t any distribution channels that we don’t work with.”