It has been two years since the British company Lighthouse decided to open an office in Barcelona to boost its growth. A couple of years later, the company, now a unicorn, is making its presence felt in the Catalan traveltech ecosystem with the acquisition of The Hotel Network, specialized in marketing personalization technology to drive direct channel growth for hotels.
The acquisition, for which no figures have been detailed, will combine Lighthouse's commercial intelligence platform with The Hotels Network's AI-powered marketing technology. The company, founded ten years ago in the Catalan capital, serves more than 20,000 hotels in over 100 countries, generating an average 32% increase in direct bookings through its technology.
Among other tools, this technology allows offering personalized messages and promotions to travelers, based on real-time user behavior, predictive algorithms, and proprietary AI agents. These functionalities will now be added to those of Lighthouse, which already include pricing intelligence, business intelligence, and benchmarking, among others.
The Hotels Network's system makes it the only platform on the market that combines integrated pricing data, predictive personalization, and multichannel marketing capabilities in a single cloud solution. "Our combined functionalities with AI and commercial intelligence will give hoteliers a powerful advantage to elevate their direct booking strategies and capture more revenue," said the founder of the Barcelona-based company, Juanjo Rodríguez.
"By integrating The Hotels Network's marketing functionalities with the existing demand and pricing data on the Lighthouse platform, we are enabling hotels to transform market intelligence into personalized booking experiences," stated Lighthouse CEO, Sean Fitzpatrick.
The British company, which achieved unicorn status in November after a $370 million funding round, has acquired the Barcelona-based company as a strategic investment to continue expanding its platform, also integrating technologies that add value to its clients. Currently, they serve more than 70,000 hotels in 185 countries, which use Lighthouse to manage and increase their bookings.