Spread the love

Calling all travel buffs and aficionados: from international jetsetters, to intrepid travellers, to weekend road trippers and grey nomads. From today, an innovative new digital platform, reZme – with ambitions to transform the accommodation sector – will offer a one-off chance for investors to take a stake in this exciting Aussie start-up.

A custom-built, subscription-based ‘software as a service’ (Saas) platform, reZme helps accommodation providers to design and manage their websites and digital channels, ensuring a best-in-industry online experience for customers and thereby driving more direct bookings. A better direct online experience will reduce hotels’ reliance on third-party booking services and in doing so, address the accommodation sector’s most significant issue around commission costs – saving hotels thousands of dollars that ultimately could go towards providing a better travel experience for all.

Inspired in format by global SaaS success story, Xero, and its mission to make managing finances easier for SMEs, reZme is dedicated to making online marketing easier for small to medium businesses in the travel sector. A low-cost monthly subscription is the only charge; there are zero booking commissions with reZme.

The technology has a simple, intuitive ‘drag-and-drop’ interface that brings all of a business’
communication channels into one platform, with tools including: an easy website builder to create and manage a highly-secure website with booking functionality and inbuilt SEO; social media management; and email marketing to design, send and manage effective customer EDMs. The ability to translate into over 100 languages means reZme makes communicating with international travellers easy.

The growth opportunity for this late-2019 start-up is significant in terms of scale and the timing could not be better; there are over 7,000 accommodation providers in Australia (more than 700,000 worldwide) and consumers have never been more passionate about supporting their local businesses, direct.

“In recent years, online travel agency sites (OTAs) such as Booking.com, Expedia and Trivago have
made a significant impact on hotel bookings, taking increasing commissions and affecting hotel
profitability and ultimately, rates. reZme aims to revolutionise the way hotels interact with their customers and support these business owners to improve their direct channel where consumers will almost always get the best rate in market. It’s not going too far to say we want to disrupt both the global hotel industry and the OTAs that have driven profit margins down,” said Matt Taylor, Co-founder and Managing Director.

reZme (‘reservations for me’) was created by two Melbourne entrepreneurs with extensive experience in the travel industry. Co-founders Matt Taylor and Luke Young met in 2013 at international hotel chain  Choice Hotels’ Asia-Pac headquarters, where Taylor was General Manager of Marketing, and Young advised on website development and customer acquisition. The passionate ‘bleisure’ travellers then embarked on separate careers in consulting – Taylor launching a marketing consultancy, and Young a digital agency plus a number of other start-ups including cult sunglasses brand, Soda Shades.

Much analysis of the global travel market and its many booking platforms by Taylor and Young confirmed there was a gap for a platform that would build on and share their collective digital marketing skills with an industry they are both extremely passionate about.

“Not only does reZme increase productivity by making direct online marketing so much simpler, it
empowers the business to take full control and view all performance analytics in one easy to understand dashboard. The cloud-based software significantly reduces both set up costs of digital channels and ongoing management, while also allowing access to best practice marketing techniques and tools,” said Young.

With subscriptions starting at just $159 per month, reZme’s accessibility to independent, local hotel
operators will be key to its future success. Not only does reZme charge no commission for bookings, the platform ensures hotel operators own their customer data, enabling future communications in a way not possible when bookings are made via other channels.

The upcoming reZme crowd-funded capital raise aims to secure $800,000 to enable further development of the platform, with new features and integrations to be added so the full service can be available to an initial target of 1,000 Australian accommodation providers in the next two years. Expressions of interest open on 25 August 2020, via Birchal, Australia’s leading equity crowdfunding platform. All investors will also become members of reZme’s travel rewards program, where they will receive discounts across reZme’s partner network of accommodation providers.

For further information on the investment opportunity, visit https://www.birchal.com/company/rezme.