Exclusive Feature: The Hotels Network, an innovative company offering technology designed to help hotels increase their revenue through 'predictive personalization' to encourage direct bookings, was founded by CEO Juanjo Rodriguez in 2015.

Today, it serves 4,000 hotels across 60 countries.

4Hoteliers sat down with Rodriguez (below, sitting down) on the sidelines of the ITB in Berlin to speak about his company, the market and the future of the hotel industry.

4Hoteliers: You spent a few years in San Francisco where you came up with the idea for your product before moving back to Barcelona. Did this help you develop your idea, your business?

Rodriguez: So clearly, business-wise, one part of the thinking in choosing San Francisco as a base was, “Well if you are going to do a new tech company, you might as well do it here and see what happens…For me it was a way to understand how people think in the tech world, not specifically in hospitality, but in general how people think about building companies and trying to be innovative.

4Hoteliers: Thinking about your target audience, what gap in the market are you bridging?

Rodriguez: When you look at size, the really big players in the travel space are the super huge technology companies like Expedia, Booking.com, Amadeus, TripAdvisor. One thing we are doing is to bring the quality of the technology they are using to the hotel industry, where the players tend to be much smaller. With our help, any hotel brand can now offer travelers simple yet personalized shopping experiences, helping them to regain their fair share of online bookings.

We are also inspired by best practices in many other industries – not only in the hospitality industry – and building a product to sell at a very affordable price for everyone.

4Hoteliers: What are your biggest markets?

Rodriguez: Europe is our top market but it's very closely followed by Americas, not only North America, but the Caribbean and South America and Mexico. This region is full of hotels, they are doing great and are eager to perform better. We are deep into Asia, too, with most of our clients so far coming from Southeast Asia – Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia.

4Hoteliers: What do you see in terms of growth for the next year or two?

Rodriguez: We are growing at a very fast rate. We had significant growth in the last two years and we expect this year to be the same. There are hundreds of thousands of potential clients and the feedback we get from the ones using our product is great. They stay with us, they understand the potential, they see the results and the more they use it, the more value they get. Therefore, it just becomes a matter of how good we are at explaining our story and going to markets where we aren’t present in yet.

4Hoteliers: Where do you see as good growth potential for you?

Rodriguez: Our aim is to grow in all markets; essentially, every major market where we haven’t been very active is a good candidate for the next 18 months.

4Hoteliers: What about product development?

Rodriguez: One of the interesting things we found in this industry is that more time we spend in it, the more opportunities we see. The industry as a whole is doing really well - there are so many gaps in the market that could be filled.

When it comes to product development, we are strong believers in speaking with hoteliers to better understand the challenges they are facing so that we can then come up with creative solutions that help them to work faster and better. We love building totally new things that don’t already exist.

Over the last year we have been focusing on developing solutions that use AI techniques to enable hyper personalization. For example, one of our new products, Oraculo, applies machine learning techniques to predict the behavior of visitors to your hotel website and then personalizes the website experience for each user with the strongest messaging and offer. It’s fascinating to watch the reaction on hoteliers’ faces when we show them this new solution alongside the compelling results that clients are seeing with it.

We have a whole series of new products in the pipeline that will come under the Oraculo umbrella brand, all based on advanced algorithms. Watch this space!

4Hoteliers: What advice would you give to someone who’s thinking of building a tech startup in the hospitality industry?

Rodriguez: The market in which you are playing is the key thing. No matter how smart you are, or how much effort you put into it, if you choose the wrong market, that’s it. It doesn’t work. So it has to be a market with the right dynamics that allow you to build up the business and some markets just don’t allow it. Once you’ve found one, you need an idea that works. Finally, you have to care about the client. If they are not happy, no matter what you do, it’s not going to work. If the client is happy, everything works.

4Hoteliers: Where do you see the sector going?

Rodriguez: I think there’s huge room for innovation in this space, both in the backend and the frontend. There’s a lot of legacy in the hotel business, systems and processes that are from 20-30 years ago, still being used because basically they still work. But this doesn’t mean that they are optimized.

Almost everyone in the industry believes that you have to change some things…that those changes would be better for the guests and better for the brands too. This evolution is already happening now and in the near future I expect to see more new ideas and the speed of change to accelerate. And The Hotels Network team looks forward to driving some of this change!

Also Read: 33 personalization terms every hotelier needs to know

About The Hotels Network:

The Hotels Network is an innovative technology company working with over 3,000 hotels around the globe. Boasting an international team of specialists with deep expertise in hospitality, product design and consumer marketing, the company offers hotels the latest technology to increase their direct bookings by adding a layer of tools to their website and booking engine. The tools provide a comparison of reviews and prices, a full suite of personalization options, and predictive analytics.

The Hotels Network helps partners bring sales back to the hotel direct, increasing conversions on hotel websites and equipping any hotel with the right software to compete for customers online. The company’s mission is to improve the booking experience and bring transparency back to both clients and hotels. www.thehotelsnetwork.com