Type Tourism Founded 2011 | Headquarters Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Number of employees 600 | |
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Key people José Eduardo Mendes e João Ricardo Mendes Products Lodging in hotels, serviced apartments and B&Bs; travel packages, vacation rentals and car rentals. Net income R$ 500 million or approximately USD$125 million Owner Kevin Efrusy, Priceline.com, Insight Venture Partners and Tiger Global Founders João Ricardo Mendes, José Eduardo Mendes Profiles | ||
Hotel Urbano is a Brazilian online travel agency. It is the company in Brazil that markets the largest number of lodging options on the internet, with a booking of over 9 million days since its inauguration. Founded in January, 2011 by brothers José Eduardo and João Ricardo Mendes, Hotel Urbano is valued at 2 billion reais or approximately USD$500 million. Its headquarters are based in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
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History
Hotel Urbano was initially founded as a collective buying website in 2011. Hotel Urbano was operated under this business model for only 5 months. Also in 2011, the two brothers repositioned the company in the market, and it then began operating as an online travel agency with focus on short-term off-season packages. In this new model, lodging rates are reduced in up to 40% compared to high-season rates.
In a few rounds of investment, American fund companies Insight Venture Partners and Tiger Global Management became Hotel Urbano’s partners. They are known to have invested in companies such as Facebook, Netflix and Linkedin.
Hotel Urbano began marketing hotel accommodations and international travel packages. In 2013, Hotel Urbano offered hotels and travel packages to 35,000 destinations in over 180 countries.
Hotel Urbano’s Facebook page is the most popular tourism page in the world (with 12 million fans) and is the 4th most popular page in Brazil.
2014 to Present
By the end of 2014 Hotel Urbano had formed a partnership with Rock in Rio and became the only Brazilian company to market travel packages to the two festival editions in 2015.
In the beginning of 2015, Hotel Urbano and RentalCars, belonging to the group Priceline.com, formed a partnership that allowed Hotel Urbano to market car reservation and rental services in over 26 thousand destinations in 180 countries.
Thinking of the medium-term IPO, Hotel Urbano implemented an Administrative Council in 2015, made up of independent members. These members are: Derek Zissman, former director of the KPMG group in the UK; Stelleo Tolda, executive vice-president and operations director at Mercado Livre; Leonardo Rocha, a business executive who has worked at Telefônica, Ponto Frio and Camargo Corrêa. The Council also includes the participation of João Ricardo Mendes and José Eduardo Mendes, founders of Hotel Urbano, and Brad Twohig, managing partner, and Elodie Dupuy, vice-president of Insight Venture Partners, an investment fund company that has led three rounds of investments in the company.
Also in 2015, the American tourism group Priceline.com invested 60 million dollars in Hotel Urbano and gained a minority stake in the business. Priceline.com is the world leader in the online tourism segment and operates companies such as Booking.com, Kayak.com, Priceline.com and Agoda.com.
This new partnership with the The Priceline Group aims to expand Hotel Urbano’s operations, especially in Latin America, through the global network of more than 780 thousand lodging partners who benefit from Priceline.com.
In May 2016, Priceline declared that due to disappointing 2015 results, reduced forecasts, and the need for additional funding, it would write down 85% of its investment in HotelUrbano. In August 2016, the group announced having written down in full its investment.
Voltem.com
In 2014, Hotel Urbano launched a website for vacation room rentals in Brazil called Voltem.com. In 2015, Hotel Urbano made an investment contribution of R$5 million to improve the Voltem.com platform.