Distribution Strategies

Sunnyvale, California-based Room 77, the world’s first hotel search engine to reveal room-specific details, is on track to include 1 million rooms by the end of the year.

Published: 15 Aug 2011

Sunnyvale, California-based Room 77, the world’s first hotel search engine to reveal room-specific details, is on track to include 1 million rooms by the end of the year.

The company has data on more than 500,000 hotel rooms in nearly 30 markets. The company, which officially launched in public beta in February this year, says its monthly run-rate for adding new hotels / rooms is increasing. Currently the offering is accessible through the web and its mobile apps on Android and iPhone.

On progress made after securing $10.5M series B funding in June this year, Kevin Fliess, general manager and VP of product for Room77, told EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta, “We just released our mobile app on Android and have grown the team significantly. In addition, we’ve doubled the number of featured destinations on Room 77 in just under five months. Internally, we’re now around 25 people full time and growing. Right now we’re still focusing our energy and investment on product and partnerships. In the coming months we’ll begin to step up our marketing efforts.”

Fliess says the new financing will help the company to increase its index of hotel rooms globally and expand its core search platform to offer more ways to help travellers shop and book hotels online and via mobile devices.

“We launched in February and have assembled some of the world’s best search engineers and travel experts to develop an innovative search platform that offers travellers a new way to shop and plan hotel stays. No other online travel site breaks down hotels by room number, including important details like square footage, bed type, distance from elevator and whether it’s adjoining or not. Room 77’s patent-pending technologies also rank rooms based on each traveller’s preferences and simulate the actual view from the window of each room,” explained Fliess.

Funding

With travel being one of the largest purchased verticals online, it’s clearly a time of change. Entrepreneurs believe there has been a heap of money on the sidelines during the recession, and now is a logical time for investors to look at the next great thing in an enormous online area – travel.

For its part, Room 77 has raised $13.5 million to date.

“I can’t think of another industry where the only constant is change,” says Fliess.

“Every week the landscape of companies changes. On one end of the spectrum you have newly minted start-ups entering. On the other end, you have “large cap” tech companies increasingly making travel a priority (Google, Apple). This means that market dynamics are always shifting and many companies will get squeezed. To avoid the squeeze and maybe even “break out”, you need a unique value proposition that delights consumers,” said Fliess.

He concluded, “The innovation we’re seeing right now tends to be concentrated in three areas: tapping into the social graph, mobile, and search. I believe the opportunity for disruption and the pace of innovation is only going to increase in these areas.”

Room 77 finished runners-up to TrustYou at The Innovation Awards that took place during EyeforTravel’s Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2011 in London in May this year.