With the second year of the pandemic, people around the world are traveling more for work again. If you’ve flown before in the past few months, the overcrowded planes prove it in part.

Another proof that travel is picking up again lies in the number of people staying in hotels and the money pouring into startups that serve both the industry and travelers. Hotel engine is the youngest startup of its kind to just raise $ 65 million in a Series B round at a valuation of $ 1.3 billion.

Returning financier Telescope Partners led the funding, which included the involvement of new investor Blackstone. Notably, the investment valued the Denver-based company nearly 9 times higher than the $ 150 million valuation it hit when it raised $ 16 million in a Series A round in 2019 – its first Financing round after bootstrapping for four years.

Hotel Engine calls itself a “Lodging Performance Network”. In other words, the startup is a global B2B member-only booking platform that aims to provide businesses with access to better room rates as well as tools and insights to “optimize their travel programs”. Meanwhile, it has been working with accommodation providers (better known as hotels) who, according to founder and CEO Elia Wallen, will benefit from access to more “quality” business travelers.

Billows started Hotel Engine in 2015 as a “simple” booking tool designed to meet the needs of the customers of another company he founded, Travelers Haven. This startup was more of a short-term housing company.

Credit: CEO and founder Elia Wallen / Hotel Engine

For Wallen’s first two years, Hotel Engine was more of a side project with admitted “limited investment or attention”. But in 2018 he started to take it more seriously and started devoting separate resources to the company, resulting in triple-digit growth within a year.

“We’ve been on an incredible growth path since then,” he told TechCrunch. And above all, Hotel Engine is something that many startups are not: profitable.

Between Q3 2020 and Q3 2021, Hotel Engine saw core booking revenue grow 20% and grow its customer base by 60% to over 40,000 companies. It has also expanded its membership base by 100,000 people for a total of more than 550,000. In the meantime, the number of employees has grown from 119 to 300 over the same period. The company expects to hire an additional 400 employees in 2022.

Wallen believes that Hotel Engine is unique in the way it uses technology to connect businesses and accommodation partners around the world.

“Our approach enables our customers to centralize their accommodation needs on one platform, from procurement and negotiation to booking and coordination,” he said. “Our technology offers significant savings and first-class customer support on a contract-free platform. “

With a view to the future, the company strives to expand its international presence.

Credit: Hotel engine

Ramzi Ramsey, Managing Director at Blackstone, believes Hotel Engine offers “a unique and differentiated” experience, especially for industries that have historically been underserved by traditional travel booking companies that do not specialize in group or extended stays.

Hotel Engine has seen “explosive growth” in recent years by providing a range of fintech and expense management software tools that make the booking process less painful, he points out.

“Hotel Engine, for example, has expanded the addressable market for hotel providers by making prepayments easier because many companies lack the working capital for large group or extended-stay stays,” Ramsey wrote via email. “With the economy reopening, we expect Hotel Engine to be a strong secondary beneficiary of the recently passed US $ 1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.”

Telescope Managing Partner and founder Mickey Arabelovic has joined the board of Hotel Engine as part of the new financing round.

“We have worked closely with Elia and the Hotel Engine team since our investment in late 2019 and have been consistently impressed by their passion, tenacity and unique focus on business accommodation,” said Arabelovic in a written statement. “There is no other company that offers travelers a smooth, easy-to-use solution, and they are just getting started.”