OTA Insight Inc., a startup with a suite of business intelligence services built specifically for the hospitality sector, today announced that it has closed a $80 million funding round led by growth equity firm Spectrum Equity.

London-based OTA insight is also backed by Eight Roads, F-Prime Capital and Highgate Technology Ventures. The startup has raised $100 million in funding to date.

OTA Insight provides cloud-based services that promise to help hotel operators gain a better understanding of their business operations. The startup’s software can also be used by companies to identify notable market developments, such as changes in customer demand that could translate to sales opportunities.

The first service in OTA Insight’s business intelligence portfolio, Revenue Insight, enables hotel operators to track sales and related metrics through visual dashboards. Executives can also access more granular details, as information on whether some properties in a hotel chain are generating less revenue than others. OTA Insight says that the software enables users to run analyses without having to manually extract sales data from a company’s systems of record for processing, which saves time and thereby boosts productivity.

The startup offers Revenue Insight alongside a second service called Parity Insight. That offering is designed to help companies detect if they’re advertising hotel room prices inconsistently across marketing channels, an issue that can hurt sales if left unfixed. An analytics dashboard enables business intelligence teams to track how frequently price inconsistencies emerge and where. 

The two other cloud services in OTA Insight’s product portfolio promise to help hotel operators track the broader market in which they compete. The Market Insight service provides tools for mapping out customer demand that, according to the startup, enable companies to predict trends up to a year ahead of time. The offering is complemented by Rate Insight, which helps hotel operators keep track of their competitors’ pricing and discount strategies.

The market reception to OTA Insight’s software has been strong. According to the startup, its services are used by hotel operators that maintain more than 55,000 properties across 185 countries. Using its latest $80 million funding round, OTA Insight intends to further expand its global presence, an effort that the startup will accelerate by hiring more employees across its engineering and sales teams. 

“Prior to the pandemic, the hospitality industry had been open to gradually adopting new technology,” said OTA Insight Chief Executive Officer Sean Fitzpatrick. “Our business experienced significant growth through 2020 despite the industry headwinds, but 2021 has been a breakthrough year for us as the recovery accelerated the pace of technology adoption. We anticipate unprecedented opportunities and growth as the recovery continues.”

OTA Insight’s funding round comes only a few months after another business intelligence startup, Preset Inc., raised a $35.9 million investment of its own from prominent venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Redpoint Ventures. Preset provides a cloud version of the open-source Apache Superset business intelligence platform. The platform enables workers to create data visualizations without having to write any code but also provides a SQL editor for technical users who require more advanced features. 

Photo: OTA Insight