Suiteness raises $5M to expand their hotel suite booking platform
Suiteness, a YC company that makes it easy to book hotel suites for groups, has raised $5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Bullpen Capital & Global Founders Capital, with participation from HVF (Max Levchins personal fund), YCs Continuity Fund, Kima Ventures and Altair Capital.
The company will use this capital to continue its expansion, and has announced 10 new cities it plans to be operating in by the end of 2017. This expansion starts withOrlando, and continues withChicago, San Francisco, Honolulu, Washington DC,Dallas, Austin, Boston, Phoenix and San Diego all later this year, the order of which will dependon member demand.
Orlando isnt exactly the next city youd think of when a startup expands beyond New York, Las Vegas and London. But the company explained that Orlando is a huge family destination (think Disney World and Universal Studios) and families are a huge portion of the startups customer base. So it makes sense.
Besides families who are using the platform to book a large suite instead of traditional connecting rooms, the two other large customer bases arecompany executives who want to each have their own room but share a common space for work, and celebration groups like bachelorparties and birthdays.
Buildingon this celebrationtrend, the company has started offering concierge services to guests like VIPreservations at restaurants and clubs. Hotels have also started asking about promoting on-property deals (like show tickets) via Suiteness concierge service, which could eventually turn into a substantial secondary revenue source for the company.
In terms of growth, Las Vegas has been the companys most popular city so far which makes sense, considering how many suites are in the citys roominventory. Suiteness also says that a new customer is signing up for the platform every 4 minutes.
Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/suiteness-raises-5m-to-expand-their-hotel-suite-booking-platform/