Do you remember the last time you had a standout experience at a restaurant or hotel? It’s possible you have SevenRooms to thank. The New York-based startup aims to transform the hospitality industry and just gained an $8 million investment in the process.
This latest round, and SevenRooms’ first institutional fundraising, was led by the prestigious Comcast Ventures and brings the startup’s total funding to $16.4 million. The company already has big plans for the coming year. Joel Montaniel, co-founder and CEO of SevenRooms tells Built In:
“With this new round of funding, we plan to continue the momentum of the past year and accelerate our growth in 2018. Most notably, this funding will enable us to ramp our recruiting efforts and scale our teams across all departments, including sales, engineering, customer success, product and marketing.”
SevenRooms’ funding history is just as star-studded as the hotels that use its platform: Chef Thomas Keller, former president of K-Swiss David Nichols and Nathan’s Famous founders the Handwerker family have all claimed their stake in the business.
Operators both large and small can benefit from tools that help them build direct, meaningful relationships with their guests.
Whether they’re an independent restaurant with a few staff, or a multi-unit hospitality group with hundreds of employees, their goal is the same: providing exceptional hospitality to their guests through memorable experiences.
SevenRooms’ most recent funding will allow it to expand its already elite client-base. Currently, SevenRooms is used by the TAO Group, Chase Hospitality Group, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and Standard Hotels. SevenRooms doesn’t simply aspire to glitz and glamour, though — it also caters to many local restaurants and hotels by enabling them to provide a five-star experience on a smaller scale.
“Operators both large and small can benefit from tools that help them build direct, meaningful relationships with their guests,” says Montaniel. “Whether they’re an independent restaurant with a few staff, or a multi-unit hospitality group with hundreds of employees, their goal is the same: providing exceptional hospitality to their guests through memorable experiences.”
Since its inception in 2011, SevenRooms has become a forerunner in hospitality technology. While other guest management platforms may exist, SevenRooms holds its own as one of the few companies to use algorithms to create a completely individualized experience. Not only can one use SevenRooms to book reservations and manage tables, the app also comes with a suite of individualized features.
For example, SevenRooms can create customized guest profiles that store detailed, personalized information including everything from a shellfish allergy to how much that client spent at that location on previous visits. The app also allows guests and employees to speak through an internal communication system, meaning that a reservation or an important all-staff meeting never gets lost in the fray again. Finally, SevenRooms provides management with valuable data insights into their visitors, allowing them to improve their business and truly offer the best services available, which is increasingly important in the highly competitive hospitality industry.
This level of data has never been available in one place until SevenRooms.
“Hospitality operators are trained to provide amazing customer experiences, but they need guest data to make these experiences possible,” Montaniel tells Built In. “This level of data has never been available in one place until SevenRooms. Our goal is to create and connect these rich insights for them automatically, taking the guesswork out of hospitality.”
Though it isn’t the only hospitality platform on the block, SevenRooms does not see other apps as competitors, but potential collaborators. Montaniel says, “Instead of limiting our client’s options on where they can promote their business, we enable maximum flexibility by allowing them to customize the SevenRooms platform to fit their needs.”
This latest funding caps off an impressive year for SevenRooms. The platform reportedly services more than 2 million clients each month, with that number growing 327 percent in total in the past year alone. They seemed to have developed a magic recipe that with a pinch of creativity and a dash of engineering. Montaniel puts it this way:
“Hospitality, at its core, is equal parts creative spirit and technical precision. When you think of some of your most memorable hospitality experiences, whether it was a round of Champagne at a restaurant for a birthday celebration or your favorite chocolate truffles for dessert, these require creativity to envision, and technical precision to execute.”
