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Skift Take
The founder of Mews said late last year that there were more acquisitions in the pipeline. Here’s the first since then, with no signs that it will be the last.
The hotel tech startup Mews is further expanding into North America with the completion of its sixth acquisition.
Mews said Thursday that it has acquired Montreal-based Hotello, a hotel property management system with more than 500 hotel customers in North America. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Prague-based Mews offers a proprietary hotel property management system and other hotel tech products. Before the deal, the Mews said it had more than 3,500 customers that operated more than 400,000 beds. Mews said customers have also processed $2.8 billion via its payments system.
Richard Valtr, founder of Mews, told Skift in November that about 12 percent of the company’s revenue comes from the U.S., and he had a goal at that time to push that number to 25 percent over the next couple of years.
“With the addition of Hotello, we triple our customer base in North America. This impacts our trajectory in the region massively,” Valtr said in an email.
“This acquisition more than pushes that revenue target towards the 25 percent goal, but with the tremendous growth we’re seeing in other regions, that goal is always changing. The technology transformation we’re seeing in the U.S., that more often than not starts with the PMS, leaves us with no doubt that our growth in the market is going to be fast over the next couple of years. This acquisition of Hotello is a great milestone for that.”
Anaïs Berzi, CEO of Hotello, said in a statement that the startup had other acquisition offers, but the team decided to go with Mews.
“When I first met with Mews, I could tell our vision for the future of hospitality were aligned,” Berzi stated.
Mews raised $185 million in November, which is being used toward organic growth as well as growth via acquisition. Besides North America, the plan is to continue expanding in Europe, and Valtr said he also sees opportunity in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Hotello acquisition was completed through Mews Ventures, the company’s venture and investment arm. The most recent acquisitions were of Cenium and point of sale system Bizzon in 2022. This is the fifth acquisition of a startup property management system.
More hotels have been investing in technology, in part to increase efficiency and drive up revenue because of financial constraints and a labor shortage post-pandemic.
Mews is one of the top hotel tech startups in regards to the number of customers. It is one of only a few companies that stands a chance at competing with a legacy player in the space, Oracle Hospitality, which is making its own technology advances with big plans for growth in the next couple of years.
Mews is invested in continually advancing the technology the powers its platform, Valtr said, with roughly half of its team focused on research and development. Some of those topics include using data to personalize guest experiences, better automating operations, and providing insight on how to better optimize hotel space to maximize revenue.
“We feel like, right now, there is a bit of a watershed moment when it comes to the adoption of software across our industry,” Valtr stated.
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