ReviewPro scores further €820K to take its hotel reputation service global

[Spain] As volcanoes erupt and plans get covered in ashes, others continue with good news. ReviewPro, an advanced reputation management platform for the hotel sector has secured an additional €820,000 ($1.1m) in seed capital for further growth, having raised approx. €1m last year.

The new funding comes from well know personalities in Spain, among them Nicolas Iglesias, co-founder of Spain’s top hosting provider Arsys, Marek Fodor, co-founder and ex-CTO of Atrapalo and Eric Shultink, CTO of Tuenti and one of the first Facebook employees, as well as other well known business angels.

We covered ReviewPro in January. Since then they have expanded into France, Italy, Portugal and Argentina and with the new capital are planning aggressive expansion into a further 30 countries, aiming to reach 2,400 hotels by the end of the year. They are now analyzing up to 22,000,000 reviews in a total of 7 languages. Growth is rapid.

According to R.J. Friedlander, the company’s CEO, “Due to the growing influence of social media and user‐generated content, the hotel sector is in the early phase of radical change with regards to brand management and the factors that are influencing marketing and online distribution sales. Our value proposition clearly resonates with hoteliers that are looking to leverage social media to increase sales and profitability through powerful analytics and increased business and competitive intelligence.”

There are countless platforms out there for reputation management in general, no doubt. However, ReviewPro isn’t going for the mass market, but rather targeting the mature and lucrative hotel market where reputation management couldn’t be more crucial. They’ve specifically focused in on hotel business intelligence, which allows them to offer features, measuring points and competitive analysis geared for hotelier’s business interests.  That’s precisely what makes them attractive;  it’s much easier for hotel marketeers to find value in their technology, rather than relying on more generic offerings.