The group hotel opportunity is large and complex, and others have failed at automating it. - Charles de Gaspe Beaubien, CEO of Groupize
Boston, Ma (PRWEB) July 10, 2013
Groupize, the first and only company in the travel industry to automate the group hotel reservations process for both travel planners and hotels, today announced it has closed a $2M Series A financing, led by Golden Seeds, with strong support from Launchpad Venture Group. The company originally raised seed capital from travel industry leaders: Hotwire’s Co-Founder, Gregg Brockway and his TripIt Co-Founders Scott Hintz and Andy Denmark; Mike Fuller the Founder of Wandrian; and others.
Groupize brings together a strong team of travel industry executives to provide an automated group hotel booking engine for groups of less than 25 rooms, as well as an interactive system for planning larger groups and meetings. Prior to Groupize, making group hotel reservations online was a time-consuming, cumbersome and often manual process for travel planners and hotels. Planners of groups needing more than five rooms could not “shop and compare” or even see real-time pricing and availability -- benefits that individual travelers have enjoyed for years. Hotels would dedicate valuable human resources to manage the booking process of small groups (5-25 rooms), rather than to larger, higher revenue groups. Groupize has removed the tedious hassles and challenges, and what used to take hours and days, can be done in minutes and at a special group rate.
“The group hotel opportunity is large and complex, and others have failed at automating it,” said Charles de Gaspe Beaubien, CEO of Groupize. “Over the last two years, we’ve developed solutions that exceed and overcome the current inefficiencies of the RFP process for both group planners and hotels. After learning from the painful lessons of the past, we are poised to automate and transform the small groups experience for the industry.”
Groupize’s technology is currently being licensed and used by one of the world’s largest hotel chains to power the online groups and meetings section of several of their brands. Groupize is also actively forming relationships with other major hotel chains and travel web sites to utilize their white label groups and meeting software.
“Groupize addresses a real pain point, which makes this a very exciting opportunity,” said Gail Hoffman, Golden Seeds Managing Director who is joining the Groupize Board of Directors. “The company has the experience, and the team, to really differentiate itself in this market segment, and to rapidly get to critical mass with its licensing and B2B approach.”
With this funding, Groupize plans to expand the technology modules, launch additional hotel partnerships, and introduce the retail B2B division. The company also plans to power online travel web sites by providing its white label engine and dedicated contact center to assist organizers of business trips, meetings, reunions, weddings, girl’s weekend getaways, family vacations and sport trips manage their trip.
About Groupize:
Founded in 2010, Groupize has developed the travel industry’s only fully automated booking engine that allows group planners to shop and book group-friendly hotels. The company’s solutions lessen the burden on the planners and hotels by automating tedious tasks such as individual credit card payments, name changes, cancellations, deviations and upgrades. The technology is available to hotel chains via a licensing model, and to major web sites via a revenue share model.
About Golden Seeds:
Golden Seeds is an investment firm that pursues above market returns through the empowerment of women entrepreneurs and the people who invest in them. The organization’s angel network, the fourth largest in the US, consists of 280 men and women located throughout the United States. Golden Seeds’ venture capital group has more than $30 million under management.
For more information:
Charles de Gaspe Beaubien
Charles(at)groupize(dot)com
Tel: (508) 232-7719
