Hotelhero exits and founding team joins Apaleo

The founders of Hotelhero, the leading hotel software review & recommendation platform, join Apaleo, the API-first hospitality platform, effective as of July 1st. Now unified under one shared vision to provide seamless connectivity based on Apaleo’s digital transactional platform for accommodation providers.

“As we join forces today, I’m more confident than ever that together with Apaleo, we can accelerate the digital potential of hotels around the world,” says Florian Montag, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Hotelhero.

Hotelhero was founded in 2017 by three graduates from the École Hoteliere de Lausanne – Julien Schmit, Thibault Gence, and Florian Montag – with the vision to bridge the gap between hotels and software vendors. Within three years, Hotelhero has become the trusted source of information for thousands of hoteliers around the globe. By providing a unique industry platform, hoteliers can discover and select their software through a recommendation engine based on market share data, unique property characteristics, and user-generated reviews.

“Still today, the biggest hurdle for hotels is the lack of seamlessly integrated applications due to missing data standardization and limited integration capabilities. We believe that Apaleo is in a unique position to change this with their open platform and API-first approach.” explains Florian.

Apaleo’s founders drive innovation in the hospitality industry with the vision to enable the #FreedomToCreate for both accommodation providers and third-party app developers. To date, the company has developed the only cloud platform based on 100% open APIs that make it simple for any app provider to connect to one ecosystem. 

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Apaleo experienced a 300% growth of its customer base. “The pandemic put a spotlight on some of our industry’s most pressing challenges with one of them being technology. We have seen a shift in mindset as hoteliers now recognize the need for a flexible and digital platform to securely automate operations and streamline guest journeys.” shares Martin Reichenbach Co-Founder and Managing Director of Apaleo.

“By joining Apaleo, we plan to further develop Apaleo’s app ecosystem and build the first truly plug & play app store to cater to the needs of accommodation providers of all kinds,” explains Thibault Gence, Co-founder and COO of Hotelhero. 

Martin Reichenbach adds, “Closing our Series A investment in March allowed us to take the unique opportunity to bring this talented group of entrepreneurs to Apaleo and join our diverse team in Munich. Florian, Julien, and Thibault bring a vast industry network and hotel tech expertise, which will allow us to further develop the Apaleo community on both sides of the platform.”

Uli Pillau co-founder and CEO of Apaleo concludes “We were very impressed with what the team of innovators at Hotelhero accomplished and it is exactly the right time to join forces so that they can bring their experience to help us accelerate our growth and scale internationally.”