RoomRaccoon becomes one super tool for hoteliers with Lobbi acquisition

An acquisition with mutual benefits

Making the world's best hotel management system. That is the ambition of RoomRaccoon, an originally Dutch company founded in 2017. With the strategic acquisition of Ghent-based property management system Lobbi, they are already taking big steps forward with this. "Our all-under-one-roof system will become even smarter, better, more user-friendly thanks to certain integrations from Lobbi," says Tymen van Dyl, CEO of RoomRaccoon.

RoomRaccoon is the brainchild of Nadja and Tymen, and saw the light of day in 2017. She was a hotelier, he, with his engineering background, built similar apps for hotels. "We noticed that small-scale hotels are run quite old-fashionedly," Tymen explains. "A lot of manual work, paperwork, different tools... Together, Nadja and I came up with the idea of building an accessible system for independent hotels to make their daily operations smarter AND optimise them: RoomRaccoon." Meanwhile, RoomRaccoon is the market leader in the Netherlands when it comes to PMS systems for smaller, independent hotels.

For RoomRaccoon, independent hotels are hotels with 10 to 100 rooms. "These are run differently from larger hotels. Bigger chains have technical capacity, in-house know-how, much bigger budgets. They build their own tech stack with a booking funnel, revenue management system and so on. Impossible for smaller hotels to tackle it that way. Our philosophy: give smaller hoteliers the same power and possibilities to offer the same guest experience as a larger hotel. Our all-in-one system is accessible, even in terms of budget."

Sounds like a dream for many hoteliers, and RoomRaccoon makes it happen. And where else does the tool make a difference? "Our system offers the possibility of dynamic pricing. Today, it's only natural for a hotel to adjust its prices according to supply and demand. A lot of industries have been doing this for years, the best-known example being airlines. RoomRaccoon continuously adjusts prices based on market dynamics. This is done with an algorithm based on rules that the hotelier also helps to determine. We look at how many rooms are still available, how much time you have left to sell those rooms, what your competitor is doing. If your competitor is suddenly fully booked: that's information you want to do something with." Online check-in with upselling (room upgrades, breakfast, extras in the room...) is also peculiar to RoomRaccoon, so it will soon be available to Lobbi customers.

"We specifically chose Lobbi because we feel a good match with them. Both with the hotels they work with and the team," Tymen smiles. The Lobbi team, incidentally, will remain on board after the takeover. "They are really clever people. They have put their system together cleverly, and we understand very well why hotels chose Lobbi. Certain of those small, clever things we would like to implement in RoomRaccoon. So soon we really will have one super tool that can do everything."

"For example, what we think is super cool about the Lobbi system is their way of handling group bookings. You notice that they have thought long and hard about that, making it easy and pleasant for the hotelier to make and manage large group bookings," appreciates the CEO. "In addition, their way of integrating with accounting packages is also very smart - we are also adopting that."

Nadja and Tymen do not immediately throw everything upside down. "We understand that everyone is used to a certain way of working; both the hoteliers and the Lobbi team. Initially, we will leave that alone and continue working on our supertool behind the scenes," Tymen says. "What we will do, however, is actively approach existing Lobbi customers. With our RoomRaccoon Roadshow, we will soon tour all customers, to meet them in person. Of course, we hope that our enthusiasm will be contagious and make them switch immediately. And of course we will make that switch as attractive as possible for them," the CEO winks.

www.roomraccoon.com