GuestDriven, a Montreal startups that helps hospitality brands build guest engagement, loyalty and drive advocacy, has raised a seed round of $3 million.
The rapidly growing hospitality software solution provider attracted investors Plaza Ventures, Real Ventures, Structure Capital and hospitality angels including Tony Cohen (CEO of Global Edge Investments), Bob MacDonald (Maritz Loyalty), Joe Poulin (Luxury Retreats), Peter Kern (Expedia) and John Granger (Drake Hotels).
“We’re very excited to have received this support from experienced technology investors and leading travel industry executives,” said CEO Anthony Zebrowski-Rubin. “With this funding we’re able to grow the platform further, providing an even greater experience to our current customers and guests and expanding into the leading hospitality brands in international markets.”
The company plans to use the funds for its GuestDriven “Mobile Guest Engagement platform”. It will provide hotels and resorts of any size with a data-driven platform to deliver a personalized experience for guests, from booking to check-out. The startup said it will also help drive revenue at the hotel level.
GuestDriven already works with 115 properties around the world, providing insights to hotel management about a guest’s history, spending power, interests and social media influence. Hoteliers can provide useful and relevant local tips, recommendations and on premise perks to loyal guests right to their smartphone or tablet. The company claims it has shown to drive up on-premise orders and revenue per stay, increasing sales.
Joining the board of directors are Jesse Kaplan (Plaza Ventures), Tom Botts (Denihan Hospitality), Joe Poulin (Luxury Retreats), John Stokes (Real Ventures) and Tony Cohen (GEI and Crescent Hotels & Resorts).
“GuestDriven demonstrates the next generation platform of choice for the hospitality space in an evolving landscape ripe for adoption of social and mobile technology change.” said Jesse Kaplan, Partner at Plaza Ventures.
GuestDriven’s platform takes data from social media, loyalty, hotel and mobile location and usage data, leveraging contextual information to enable personalized experiences. It ends up providing a ‘big data’ view of guest behaviour trends and industry performance.
“GuestDriven is part of a new generation of Canadian startups focused on successful data-driven products,” said Real Ventures’ John Stokes. “Their platform is an entirely new way for hotels to do business with their guests and for guests to experience hotel stays, using streams of data untapped in an integrated fashion before now.”