Meet Amenitis, a Barcelona-based startup that describes its products as the operating system for independent hoteliers, B & Bs and cottages. Technically, Amenitiz has developed a vertical software-as-a-service product that combines everything you need to run a hotel.
The company just raised a $ 7.5 million seed round led by Point Nine. Otium and several business angels such as Avi Meier, Matt Robinson and Carlos Gonzales also took part in today’s round. Jean-Christophe Taunay and Arthur Waller will also become independent directors.
Amenitiz takes care of three important building blocks in the hospitality industry in particular – it is a property management system, it acts as a channel manager and allows you to accept direct bookings more easily.
You may have noticed that the same hotel is listed on many different websites, mostly owned by two companies – Booking Holdings (Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Kayak …) and Expedia Group (Expedia, Hotels.com, HomeAway, Trivago …) ). Because the sales channels are highly fragmented, it has become complicated to manage the listings on all of these websites.
Hotels typically rely on channel managers to avoid cumbersome micromanagement. A channel manager can manage your listings on dozen of booking sites at the same time. Bookings are synced, which means your hotel will show up as fully booked on Hotels.com when you’ve sold the last room on Booking.com.
And a channel manager becomes even more useful when it integrates directly with your Property Management System (PMS). You can use this tool to manage your hotel. For example, you can assign rooms, add an additional night and get an overview of the next few weeks.
Rather than relying on legacy technology, Amenitiz wants to create a true software-as-a-service alternative that is ready to use right out of the box. As an added benefit, you can build cool things on this foundation.
The startup can also help you, for example, with the creation of a website for your hotel or B&B. On this page, users can book rooms directly via the startup’s booking module. And even if people want to book a room by phone call or WhatsApp message, you can send a payment link and track the booking in Amenitiz.
So far, Amenitiz has attracted 3,000 properties. With today’s financing round, Amenitiz plans to add additional functions such as revenue management. It will triple the size of its petrol and will focus on the French, Italian and Spanish markets.
