A business mind: Raphael Cohen, co-founder of HotelQuickly
The founding team of HotelQuickly recognised this problem as a vast opportunity – and decided to help hotels optimise their occupancy rates by offering discounts to consumers and making last-minute bookings as easy as possible...
Despite a fast-growing travel industry in many Asian markets, 25 per cent of hotel rooms in Asia are empty on any given night. This includes an average of 7,000 hotel rooms in Hong Kong and 20 per cent of rooms in Singapore.
The founding team of HotelQuickly recognised this problem as a vast opportunity – and decided to help hotels optimise their occupancy rates by offering discounts to consumers and making last-minute bookings as easy as possible.
Thus HotelQuickly was born in March 2013, as a mobile-only booking platform available on iOS, Android and Blackberry. Currently, HotelQuickly has 2,500 hotel partners in more than 100 cities in a dozen countries.
This month, HotelQuickly received US$4.5 million in its Series A-1 round. This round was led by the Japan-headquartered global internet media company GREE. Investors include William E. Heinecke, CEO and chairman of Thailand-based Minor International, a hospitality group operating 100 hotels in Asia.
HotelQuickly is headquartered in Hong Kong, with offices in Bangkok, Singapore, Taipei, Jakarta, and Ho Chi Minh City. The founding team of five includes Raphael Cohen, based in Hong Kong, and his co-founders Tomas Laboutka, who splits his time between Bangkok, Singapore and Tokyo, and Christian Mischler, Michal Juhas and Mario Peng, who are based in Bangkok.