SevenRooms Raises $50 Million for Hospitality Tech: Travel Startup Funding This Week

This week, travel startups announced more than $275 million in funding.

>>Sonder is on track to raise $200 million as part of a new Series E funding round set to close soon. The San Francisco-based company confirmed this week that it had raised $170 million so far in the round, led by Fidelity, Westcap, and Inovia Capital.

>>SevenRooms, a guest experience platform for restaurants and hotels, raised $50 million in Series B funding.

Providence Strategic Growth led the round in the New York-based startup.

SevenRooms has heavily focused on restaurants so far. But increasingly many hotel groups, such as Mandarin Oriental and MGM Resorts International, have been adopting its services for managing their food-and-beverage and related operations.

Its software combines customer relationship management tools with tools for reservation, waitlist, and table management, online ordering, contactless ordering and payments, online reputation management, and marketing automation for wooing customers to return.

>>Hopin, a virtual events provider, raised $40 million in Series A funding.

IVP led the round in the London-based startup.

Hopin provides tools to build, manage, and promote virtual conferences, where attendees can watch keynote sessions, attend networking events, or join breakout sessions. Nearly 1 million users have attended events hosted by more than 16,000 organizations, including the United Nations, NBCUniversal, and Adobe, via its services.

Competitors include Cvent and Attendify. Hopin, founded in 2019, last raised $6.5 million in seed funding.

>>Aventri, the global leader in event management software, has raised a strategic growth equity round of an undisclosed amount with current private equity investors HGGC and Level Equity. Read the story at Skift’s sister brand EventMB.

>>Mounsey, has received $7 million (50 million renminbi) in a Series A funding round.

N5Captial participated in the investment in the China-based company.

Mounsey’s core proposition is the business-to-business aggregation of tourism products. It links suppliers and resellers through both online and branded outlets.

>>HyperGuest, a hotel distribution tech company, has raised a seed round of about $5 million.

Viola Ventures participated.

HyperGuest, which launched this year in Israel, aims to empower hotels to reach travelers through a direct link with travel service providers via a more seamless digital process than what’s currently in the market. The company’s founders have extensive hotel distribution experience.

>>RoverPass, a camping reservation startup, has closed a $2 million funding round.

The company, founded in 2014 and based in Austin, Texas, offers an online campground and recreational vehicle (RV) park reservation management system. It provides free software for campground and RV park owners, and hosts one of the largest directories of camping locations in the U.S., said CEO Ravi Parikh.

>>Teooh, a platform for creating virtual events, raised an undisclosed round of funding from Spark Capital and General Catalyst.

The fundraising brought the London-based company’s total funding to date to $4.5 million.

>>NextRetreat, a company that helps plan and manage business team travel, has raised about $675,000 (€600,000) in seed financing from Vision Ventures.

The startup, launched this year and based in Kosice, Slovakia, strives to help teams choose the right trip destination, find and book venues and lodging, and arrange local services, such as airport transfers and catering.

Skift Cheat Sheet:
We define a startup as a company formed to test and build a repeatable and scalable business model. Few companies meet that definition. The rare ones that do often attract venture capital. Their funding rounds come in waves.

Seed capital is money used to start a business, often led by angel investors and friends or family.

Series A financing is typically drawn from venture capitalists. The round aims to help a startup’s founders make sure that their product is something that customers truly want to buy.

Series B financing is mainly about venture capitalist firms helping a company grow faster. These fundraising rounds can assist in recruiting skilled workers and developing cost-effective marketing.

Series C financing is ordinarily about helping a company expand, such as through acquisitions. In addition to VCs, hedge funds, investment banks, and private equity firms often participate.

Series D, E and beyond These mainly mature businesses and the funding round may help a company prepare to go public or be acquired. A variety of types of private investors might participate.