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A new business set up by a group of hoteliers aims to double the occupancy rates of hotel meeting rooms by launching an real-time central reservation system online.
Okanda aims to increase the occupancy of meeting rooms from 30% to 60%, boosting profitability for thousands of UK hotels, while simultaneously streamlining the booking process for customers.
The business has raised over £1m in seed funding and is set to launch later this year in the UK and Germany before seeking to expand further into international territories.
Dirk Führer, CEO of Okanda and previously chief commercial officer for the Steigenberger Hotel Group, said: “We are very excited about the unveiling of our revolutionary system and we know from first-hand experience that hoteliers will be liberated from a very time-consuming and frustrating process.
“Okanda removes a lot of the antiquated barriers encountered when booking a small meeting room, such as long-winded request for proposals, and equally helps hoteliers increase occupancy and build incremental revenue in a traditionally difficult to manage area. Furthermore, [it] frees up resources and broadens hoteliers’ meeting inventory to not only better serve their existing customers, but also to attract new ones.”
The firm says meeting rooms are “only in use 30% of the time” in the UK hotel market, but also that there are around 10,000 such rooms (seating up to 50 people), which would be worth approximately £40bn in booking revenues.
Okanda is backed by two leading German banks, KfW and NRW.BANK.
