And while the global big chain hotels can afford legacy expensive revenue management systems), the long tail of small chain and independent hotels - which we estimate to be over 3 million rooms at present - have been left to fend for themselves.
After Covid-19 left the industry in shambles over the last three years, the rebound has been remarkable with the online travel market in Southeast Asia projected to surge to an estimated worth of $44 billion by 20251 and over $100 billion by the end of the decade across APAC. And while the airline industry has been quick to adopt technology solutions especially when it comes to dynamic pricing of seats, the hotel industry is only in its initial stages of adopting Revenue Management Systems2. Setting a price for room rates is often decided based on the hotel operators’ experiences rather than a data-driven approach, leading to inefficient pricing strategies. This limits the industry’s ability to effectively address this lost economic opportunity of US$ 33 Billion.
This is where Radiant1 comes in, using machine learning algorithms to analyze factors including real-time demand, location of properties (going even more granular to room type) and traveler behavior to list a few, enabling the system to provide optimized room rate pricing on a real time basis thereby maximizing revenue for the business. For hotels that have not digitized their backend operations, Radiant1’s suite of software solutions includes modules such as channel management and hotel management systems to enable the customer to complete its digital transformation journey. This in turn provides additional data insights of the hotel operations and its end consumers to further enhance the output of the algorithm leading to a further increase in the topline for the customer. The company is thriving in the post-pandemic travel recovery, having already established its footprint across three markets – Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia while more than doubling its room count under management across independent and chained hotels over the past year.
While we believe the independent hospitality sector is ripe for technological disruption, it requires a philosophical warrior nurturer3 founder who not only possesses a deep technical skillset but is also an ‘insider’ who truly understands the pain points of what owner/operators experience on a daily basis. We believe we have found that in Apichai - founder and CEO of Radiant1. Hailing from a hotelier family in Thailand, having founded and subsequently taken a B2B enterprise technology startup public, Apichai decided to combine his knowledge and experience to found Radiant1 four years ago.
Given the extremely strong founder-market fit and tailwinds the industry is experiencing, we believe Radiant1 is perfectly poised to capitalize on the growing demand for data-driven software solutions in the hospitality industry and we are excited to support the team on its journey to become a leading provider of revenue management SaaS solutions in the ASEAN market and beyond.
1 https://www.statista.com/statistics/958404/southeast-asia-online-travel-market-value/
2 https://insights.ehotelier.com/suppliers/2023/02/03/duetto-outlook-trends-2023-survey-results/
3 https://www.monkshill.com/content-hub/what-i-look-for-in-startups
