The startup Amenitiz, specialized in software development for the independent hotel sector, has closed an investment round of 6.5 million euros led by the European venture capital firm Point Nine Capital and the Backed fund. The hospitech platform will allocate this funding to its growth by entering new countries and responding to strong demand in the French, Italian, and Spanish markets. Amenitiz was considered one of the ten most prominent startups in Barcelona by Wired in 2021 and one of the ten Spanish startups with meteoric growth according to EU-Startups.
The company, co-founded by Alexandre Guinefolleau, Emmanuelle Guinefolleau, and Frédéric Cadet, has worked since its creation in 2016 with more than 3,000 establishments in 28 different countries and now has over 100 employees. In the new phase, the startup expects to triple the size of its team in the coming years.
The platform, which has promoted the creation of a complete operating system for hotel management that allows to counteract the dominance of online travel agencies (OTAs), also bases its expansion on the design of additional services, such as revenue management, in order to offer independent hoteliers services that until now were only available to large hotels.
The firm has developed management applications for independent hotels, B&Bs, and rural houses across Europe, for whom it has designed websites, a booking engine, a rate and reservation inventory control (channel manager), and a PMS operating system, among other services. It has also expanded its operations with a very easy-to-use payment management system that hoteliers use daily to automate their tasks, such as invoicing and transactions.
Amenitiz, created in 2016, has collaborated with more than 3,000 establishments in 28 countriesThe firm has seen an increase in demand for services especially in 2020, the year in which it has quadrupled its growth,in a complicated period for the hospitality sector following the coronavirus pandemic. The CEO, Alexandre Guinefolleau, acknowledges that "unfortunately, as hoteliers increasingly depend on online distribution, they often realize that their current technology package, if any, is unnecessarily laborious, costly, and cumbersome. We want to change this factrebuilding the hotelier's operating system and becoming the first choice for any establishment in Europe.
The financing round has also been subscribed by various business angels, among whom are Avi Meier, co-founder of Travelperk; Matt Robinson, promoter of GoCardless, and Carlos Gonzales, former operations director of GoCardless.
In this latest round, Amenitiz also has the support of existing investors, such as the Otium Capital fund; Arthur Waller, CEO of Pennylane, who has joined as an independent member of the firm's board; Nicolas Celier, from Ring Capital, and Sebastien Venturini, from Weekendesk.