Germany: Acomodeo has received a seven-figure investment to help fund its global expansion.
Founded in 2015 by David Wohde and Eric-Jan Krausch, the company now plans to open three international offices, in India, south-east Asia and the USA.
Currently, about 170,000 professionally managed serviced apartments in more than 100 countries can be booked online via the marketplace. The company’s goal is to aggregate 50 per cent of global supply by the end of 2018. By 2020 it is aiming for 90 per cent.
In order to achieve this goal, Acomodeo has developed the Acomodeo AMS (Apartment Management System), an administration software for apartment operators. With the AMS, serviced apartments cannot just be offered online for short stay, but for several months or even years. Acomodeo says the system replaces the traditional manual booking processes which is still predominant in the market of long-stay accommodation.
The demand for serviced apartments is primarily driven by the corporate booking solution Acomodeo IBE. By the end of 2017, three German DAX companies and more than 300 SMEs were using the SaaS solution for apartment bookings. On average, the IBE realised a length of stay of 79 nights per booking with a shopping basket of €5,600.
“By digitising supply and bundling demand, we were able to reduce our customers’ overnight accommodation costs in the long-term segment by up to 35 percent in 2017,” said Eric-Jan Krausch, CEO and co-founder of Acomodeo.
The new offices in Mumbai, Singapore and on the American west coast will initially start with procurement. In a second step, the internationalization of sales and the expansion of global market leadership will be initiated. “The aim is to provide our customers with simple processes and a strong offering with the best possible transparency for the still fragmented segment of serviced apartments”, said Krausch. This will be implemented, among other things, by expanding the company’s own booking and distribution technology as well as by further connections to technical suppliers and common booking machines in the business travel segment.</p
