SiteMinder

Company history

SiteMinder was founded in 2006 by CEO Mike Ford, who invested $180,000 of his savings into the venture, and CTO Mike Rogers. Prior to founding the company, Ford had an investment stake in the Australian hostel operator Australian Leisure Operators and worked for ICS Global. Ford originated the idea for the company, taking his inspiration from his work in digitizing medical industry documents, which he believed could streamline hotel reservation systems for the hospitality industry in a similar manner to its effect on hospitals and health funds. The company began with three employees, adding a customer support person (Bagath Singh) in addition to the roles of Ford's and Rogers'.

The initial market for SiteMinder was delimited to Australia, before beginning to take on clients from the UK, and then elsewhere. After a few months the company received $250,000 in angel investment. The same investors injected an additional $1 million into the company in 2008 in order to allow it to expand overseas. One of its first partners was Booking.com, based in London. It opened a second office in 2010, located in London, in order to manage its business in Europe. In 2012 it received $5 million in venture capital funding. That year it handled about $2 billion in hotel reservation revenue for its clients. SiteMinder products have been used by both small boutique hotels and some of the world's largest.

By early 2013 there were at least seven thousand hotel establishments that used SiteMinder for their online reservations. This grew to more than 10,000 hotels by the middle of the year, and the handling of $4.2 billion in hotel reservation revenue in 105 countries. That year SiteMinder's company revenue increased by 80%. In early 2014, the company received $30 million in venture capital funding from Technology Crossover Ventures in Silicon Valley, in order in part to increase the company's presence in the United States. At the time of the investment, SiteMinder had approximately 11,000 client hotels and 200 employees. In September 2014, the company had 14,000 client hotels and processed more than $7 billion in transactions over the 12 months ending 30 June 2014. In 2015 SiteMinder acquired Globekey, a company that has developed reservations systems for hotels, and a tool for taking hotel reservations via social media.

As of December 2016, SiteMinder has over 550 employees globally.

Technology

The core SiteMinder platform for reservations is The Channel Manager, which automates most of the processes required in the creation of a room reservation. The platform is used by hotel chains and travel companies such as TripAdvisor. Another SiteMinder platform is the Room Distribution Exchange (RDX), which allows direct connectivity for travel agents to contact hotel groups and arrange reservations. SiteMinder also developed TheBookingButton, which allows hotels to receive online reservations directly through their websites. This includes the ability for potential guests to check for room availability and cost before proceeding with making an official reservation. The system is commission-free. SiteMinder hotel management systems store their information in an Internet cloud. Use of SiteMinder systems have led to increases in online revenue of about fifty percent in larger hotels. SiteMinder partners with other technology providers such as IDeaS Revenue Solutions, which specializes in revenue management software and consultations, combining IDeaS software into its products.