Hong Kong’s HotelQuickly has raised a huge Series A-1 round of US $4.5 million.
The investment was led by global mobile social company GREE and also included William E. Heinecke, the CEO and chairman of Thai-based Minor International, a hospitality giant that operates over 1,500 restaurants and 100 hotels in the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.
The last-minute hotel booking app’s latest deal will bring its total funds to $US 5.5 million, having raised $1.13 million back in September of last year. According to a release, the HotelQuickly team plans on using the new capital to ramp up its product development efforts and will also be hiring for a number of development and marketing roles in its Bangkok and Hong Kong offices.
Since GREE has just launched a last-minute booking service in Japan called Tonight, the partnership between the two likeminded companies seemed inevitable. “HotelQuickly has expanded at a phenomenal pace this year to emerge as the clear leader in last-minute bookings in Asia-Pacific, with more than 3,000 partner hotels and 100 destinations,” said Eiji Araki, a board member at GREE. “Our two companies share a mobile-first approach so this partnership is a natural fit.”
After bringing the trend “flashpacking” (spontaneous luxury travelling which is popular in the US and Europe) to the Asia-Pacific region, HotelQuickly’s customer base has grown beyond 150,000, with over 300,000 downloads and has expanded to 12 markets including Singapore, Taiwan and Australia. Read our 5 Questions with one of HotelQuickly’s co-founders here.
Join us in congratulating one of our homegrown startups!
Watch co-founder Raphael Cohen pitch HotelQuickly at CoCoon last year.
Fantastic job. Great to see more Hong Kong startups dominate the eco system in Asia. Go HotelQuickly!