RateGain to acquire myhotelshop

RateGain Travel Technologies Limited, a provider of SaaS solutions for travel and hospitality, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire myhotelshop, a company incorporated in Germany, which provides a platform to help hotels improve direct guest acquisition. Together, myhotelshop and RateGain will now offer hotels the ability to reach more customers at higher returns, the companies report.

The agreement is in line with RateGain’s mission to become the leading revenue maximization platform for the hospitality and travel industry. COVID-19 accelerated digitization of customer interactions with Phocuswright reporting that nine out of 10 travelers engage with travel online. The research also shows that most travelers do not shop and book from the same source, with a majority of online shoppers searching on OTAs and booking on hotel websites. In the midst of multiple channels including intermediaries, metasearch and OTAs, hotels are struggling to create the optimum distribution strategy that helps them drive more bookings and lower acquisition costs, according to the companies.

This increases the need for hotels to move away from disparate systems and have a single provider that can help them get better control on guest acquisition and reduce dependency on one channel. myhotelshop offers reporting, bid management and campaign intelligence platform for metasearch publishers and other travel products that enables hotel suppliers, OTAs and agency clients to reach more customers at higher returns.

“We are delighted to welcome [CEO/founder] Ullrich [Kastner] and the myhotelshop team to the RateGain family,” said Bhanu Chopra, founder, RateGain. “The merger will help in addressing a key challenge that the industry is facing in the post-COVID world that is witnessing increased digitization. The need to become digital first is increasingly becoming chaotic and we aim to make it simpler for hotels to manage their acquisition strategy and enable them to unlock new revenue.”

Kastner added, “With RateGain, we found a partner that helps us scale our technology and business model globally and at the same time keep our company brand and culture as it is. Our people, customers and partners rely on the fact that we stay who we are, just as much it is important for them that we keep our growth path, to stay ahead in the meta and online marketing space for hotels. We aspire to be the leading marketing software for individual hotels and medium-sized chains and the merger with RateGain will help us further enhance this vision within a strong technology framework.”