Travel and hospitality software provider RateGain Travel Technologies on Thursday said it has acquired myhotelshop, a Germany-based online marketing service for hoteliers.
The deal is aimed at helping a pandemic-stricken hospitality industry lower acquisition costs, a statement said.
“As Covid accelerated digitisation of customer interactions, according to Phocuswright 9 out of 10 travellers engaged with travel online. The research also shows that most travellers do not shop and book from the same source with a majority of online shoppers searching on OTAs (online travel agencies) and booking on hotel websites,” the statement added.
Even as multiple channels such as intermediaries, metasearch and OTAs emerge, RateGain said hotels are struggling to create the optimum distribution strategy that helps them drive more bookings and lower acquisition costs.
myhotelshop offers a reporting, bid management and campaign intelligence platform for metasearch publishers and other travel products that enables hotel suppliers, OTAs, and agency clients to reach more customers at higher returns.
“With RateGain we found a partner that helps us scale our technology and business model globally and at the same time keep our company brand and culture as it is... We aspire to be the leading marketing software for individual hotels and medium-sized chains and the merger with RateGain will help us further enhance this vision within a strong technology framework,” Ullrich Kastner, founder and CEO of myhotelshop, said.
RateGain has filed draft papers for its initial public offering (IPO) that will see Massachusetts-based private equity firm TA Associates make a partial exit.
The homegrown company plans to raise Rs 400 crore through the IPO which will be deployed towards repayment of a loan availed of by subsidiary RateGain UK from Silicon Valley Bank; payment of deferred consideration for acquisition of DHISCO; strategic investments, acquisitions and inorganic growth; investment in technology innovation, artificial intelligence; purchase of certain capital equipment for data centre.
In the last known buy, the company had reportedly acquired Chicago-based hospitality sector-focused digital marketing services provider BCV.
Founded in 2004, RateGain provides software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based hospitality and travel technology solutions, such as revenue management decision support, electronic distribution, brand engagement, channel management, competitive rate intelligence, and price optimisation.
Established in 2012, myhotelshop provides solutions to increase direct sales of hotels and make it a profitable distribution channel by optimising, managing and distributing hotel content and campaigns to demand partners.
