Hotiday, the formula for selling unsold hotel rooms

It is difficult for a hotel to achieve a room occupancy rate of 80-90%. It is physiological that a certain proportion of the rooms remain unsold. This is where Hotiday comes in, a start-up that has developed its business by buying up this stock of unsold rooms, those that are almost never occupied, paying them in advance to the hotelier who thus has the certainty of having no unsold rooms during the season. To put them on the market, after having customised them and included them in its Room Collerction, the platform takes care of it at sale prices or close to it, which start at around 80 euros per night. With this formula, Hotiday secures 5 million incremental revenues for partner hotels this year and aims to double the number of properties from 100 to 200 hotels in Europe by 2026. A move that will reach 20 million in revenue against the more than 10 million expected this year. The result is the fruit of a targeted expansion strategy, also supported by the recent 5.5 million investment round led by the P101 SGR fund, and of an offer that continues to respond to the need for efficiency and enhancement of the accommodation capacity of partner hotels.Established in 2022 from an idea of Vittorio Gargiulo, Federico Brunelli and Federico Di Carlo, today Hotiday counts prestigious names such as B&B Hotels, Club del Sole, TH Resorts and ITI Marina among its partner structures. The partnership renewal rate reaches 95%, a sign of a solid and consolidated relationship, while the European presence has expanded to four key markets: France, Spain, Greece and Portugal.

"The Average daily rate figure can be misleading: the first rooms of a hotel are sold daily at full rate, while the last ones remain unsold, except in rare cases of full occupancy and at greatly reduced prices. Even if all distribution channels (online, offline and direct) are fully utilised, historical data show that at least 10% of the rooms remain physiologically empty," explains Federico Brunelli, Head of Revenue & Co-Founder of Hotiday. "Unlike traditional operators and online travel agencies, which only generate revenue for hoteliers if rooms are sold, Hotiday guarantees a secure and fixed income for selected rooms, transforming unsold capacity into concrete and stable value.

For next year, the growth strategy envisages an intensification of the presence in Italy and in the markets of France, Spain, Greece and Portugal, with targeted investments to strengthen operational capacity and commercial presence. "Hotiday's success is not just measured in numbers, but in its ability to transform the historical challenges and problems of the hospitality industry, that of unsold rooms, into concrete growth opportunities for hotels," adds Vittorio Gargiulo, CEO and Co-founder of Hotiday. "Not only will we double the number of partner hotels, but we will continue to innovate with advanced technologies and customised services that meet the needs of hoteliers and modern travellers. Our goal is to offer our partner hotels better value than the large international hotel groups, while eliminating the high costs and stringent constraints that these affiliations entail".

Exploit the potential of unsold rooms with dedicated technologies and services. The Hotiday model is based on the evidence that at least 10 per cent of rooms in hotels remain unsold for physiological reasons, and that these actually represent a valuable and still under-exploited resource. Through the guaranteed purchase of these rooms, enhanced with dedicated services and furnishings, Hotiday enables hotels to immediately increase turnover and optimise occupancy thanks to a business model pioneered in the sector that does not create competition with partner establishments.

The start-up has also launched a proprietary Revenue management system capable of optimising the management of rates and bookings. Through this tool, Hotiday has managed with a single Revenue manager to manage more than 100 facilities, increasing RevPAR, the average revenue generated by each available room, by 20% and improving occupancy by 10%. It is precisely because of these specificities and in light of this evidence that Hotiday has been able to make this additional asset available to its partners. This system also allows for automatic and real-time updating of prices and is compatible and connectable with over 130 facility management software via an intuitive dashboard, enabling data-driven decisions to improve economic performance and maintain control over monitored metrics.