2006
Two friends named Mike saw there wasn’t a way for hotels to exchange booking information with the websites they listed their rooms on. So, they quit their jobs to find a solution and inside a Sydney rental apartment was born SiteMinder – the original name of our flagship solution, The Channel Manager.
The Mikes went door-to-door, offering the solution to hotels for free as a show of faith in its promise.
2007
Within six months after launch, 70+ hotels were using our channel manager and loving it. A low monthly fee was introduced to support development and we took our offering offshore, beginning our dominance in New Zealand.
We received AU$250,000 from an angel investor this year and hired our first employee!
2008
With the growth of metasearch and the rise of OTAs, hotels began searching for solutions that could allow them to take reservations directly through their hotel website. Enter SiteMinder’s online booking engine: TheBookingButton, now simply SiteMinder’s Hotel Booking Engine.
In August, we landed our first hotel chain in Rydges. The win began the succession of hotel chains that would adopt our solutions over the years, recognising their unrivalled ability to scale – up or down.
2009
We inked a partnership with one of the largest property management systems in the world: ‘Opera’ by Oracle (then Micros-Fidelio), cementing the central role we play within the travel ecosystem and a hotel’s tech stack.
2010
Our success in the Pacific encouraged us to expand in other parts of the world. We opened an office in London in May and, by December, we’d earned the 68th spot on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific list.
2011
By this time, we were celebrating 4,000+ hotel customers around the world, 16% of which were based outside of the Pacific. The annual hotel revenue that passed through our technology exceeded US$1 billion for the first time.
We also enhanced our suite of hotel solutions with the launch of GDS by SiteMinder.
2012
After only five years, SiteMinder had become a force not only in the Pacific but South-East Asia, the UK and South Africa. The annual hotel revenue that passed through our technology had doubled to US$2 billion.
To support our global expansion, we raised AU$5 million in funding from Bailador Investment Management and opened a new office in Bangkok in October.
Our channel manager was also opened up to be white labelled by other technology providers, as part of our reseller program.
2013
Hello, Hotel Customer #10,000. Not only did we now have 10,000 hotels who backed us, our growth trajectory outside of the Pacific was stronger than ever. By this year, 36% of our customers were based in EMEA and 13% were located in Asia.
We also certified as a Premium Partner to TripAdvisor’s TripConnect, and ranked #63 for the second consecutive year in the BRW Fast 100.
2014
Oh, what a year. In January, we became the first Australian-headquartered investment for Silicon Valley-based TCV. The US$33 million funding accelerated further development of our technology and global expansion with the opening of our fifth office, in Dallas, in June to support our entry into the US market.
Having observed the rise of the Chinese traveller market, in October we partnered with China’s leading OTA and Trip.com’s parent company, Ctrip, and became the first channel manager provider to establish a real-time, two-way connection to their platform for hotels.
CIO Review placed us in its annual list of the 20 most promising travel & hospitality solution providers.
2015
The annual flow of hotel revenue through our technology surpassed US$10 billion for the first time.
Recognising the cruciality of direct bookings, we acquired leading online booking engine provider Globekey in June to strengthen our already-formidable presence in Asia. This move was supported by the launch of our own hotel website creator, Canvas, at World Travel Market London.
We ended the year with the welcome of Restel’s Rantasipi Tropiclandia as our 20,000th hotel customer.
2016
H2 Ventures and Investec ranked us #17 in their inaugural report of the top 50 technology pioneers to come out of Australia and New Zealand. The prestigious honour coincided with our sixth consecutive listing on the Deloitte Technology Fast Australia 50.
By this time, we had 23,000+ customers around the world who were introduced to our hotel business intelligence solution and new office in Galway, Ireland, in the same year.
2017
Hi there, RQ Grupo Hotelero a.k.a Hotel Customer #26,000! Our signing of the Chilean group marked the beginning of our deep penetration into the Latin American market.
Only months later, The Silicon Review revealed our spot on their 2017 list of the ‘50 Best Companies to Watch‘.
2018
In February, Airbnb shocked the world by welcoming traditional hospitality businesses for the first time and we were there to launch the offering with them as Airbnb’s first global hotel technology partner. We signed our 30,000th hotel customer one month later.
Come June, we were ready to tackle one of the most notorious barriers to innovation in hotel technology: industry fragmentation. The launch of SiteMinder Exchange was a statement to address just this.
To complete the year, we appointed Sankar Narayan as our CEO. He brought with him 20+ years in the travel, technology, media and telecommunications sectors.
2019
By 2019 we were hitting big numbers.
We had 35,000+ customers, generated AU$100 million+ in annual recurring revenue and became the first hotel commerce platform to process more than 100 million hotel bookings in a single year—a one-night stay at Hotel Chelsea in Köln, Germany, the 100 millionth. We had customers in 150 countries and more than 80 per cent of our revenue was now coming from outside of Australia.
Adding to our credentials as an end-to-end platform, the SiteMinder Hotel App Store formed the first marketplace to allow hotels of all sizes to easily discover, choose and connect applications to their business systems for greater guest experiences and revenue.
2020
We opened an office in Berlin to better serve continental Europe and launched our Insights product to provide hoteliers actionable data on their local market, business performance and guests.
While 2020 will go down as a tough year in travel, we stayed busy, ready to support our customers through the unknown period and especially when travel returned.
In November, with travel on the mend, we kicked off the SiteMinder Partner Program, to bring out the strength of the local advisory community for hotels.
2021
Now 15 years old and with bigger ambitions ahead, SiteMinder made its debut on the Australian Securities Exchange in November.
We launched SiteMinder Multi-Property, setting a new distribution management standard for modern hotel groups and chains, and introduced SiteMinder Pay, allowing hotels the ability to process guest payments from within our platform for the first time.
Offering more ways for hotels to maximise their online reach, we welcomed trivago to our Demand Plus metasearch program.
2022
A fan favourite, we started the year by winning big once again at the Hotel Tech Awards, taking home the highest number of major accolades – including the top prize of People’s Choice Award – and continuing our strong performance in the awards program year after year.
We joined both the S&P/ASX 300 Index and S&P/ASX All Technology Index, to be recognised among the top-performing companies and tech brands on the ASX, and in August acquired GuestJoy, adding guest engagement to our platform’s bag of tricks.
2023
Growth mode: activated. We opened offices in Manila, Barcelona and Bangalore, and shot past AU$150 million in annual recurring revenue.
To further ignite our growth ambitions, Trent Innes, Xero’s former Managing Director of Australia and Asia, and former Apple executive, Tim Howard, joined our leadership team.
In October, our CEO Sankar Narayan penned an open letter to the global hotel industry, blazing the trail for a new era of dynamic revenue management. From that moment, SiteMinder’s Smart Platform vision, and mission to make sophisticated revenue management accessible to every hotel, were introduced to the world.
2024
Hitting milestone after milestone, 2024 was a year of unstoppable momentum.
We launched the SiteMinder Mobile App, giving hoteliers the power to drive revenue from their devices, and paving the way for the launch of Dynamic Revenue Plus, which made dynamic revenue management accessible to every hotel worldwide. Additionally, our deepened partnership with Trip.com and strategic integration with Cloudbeds meant more distribution and revenue opportunities for our customers.
By year’s end, we had surpassed 2,000 ecosystem partners, grown to over 44,500 customers and generated over US$50 billion in hotel revenue through our platform.
A strong finish? We’re only getting started.
