Suiteness, a YC company that makes it easy to book hotel suites for groups, has raised $5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Bullpen Capital & Global Founders Capital, with participation from HVF (Max Levchin’s personal fund), YC’s Continuity Fund, Kima Ventures and Altair Capital.
The company will use this capital to continue its expansion, and has announced 10 new cities it plans to be operating in by the end of 2017. This expansion starts with Orlando, and continues with Chicago, San Francisco, Honolulu, Washington DC, Dallas, Austin, Boston, Phoenix and San Diego all later this year, the order of which will depend on member demand.
Orlando isn’t exactly the next city you’d think of when a startup expands beyond New York, Las Vegas and London. But the company explained that Orlando is a huge family destination (think Disney World and Universal Studios) – and families are a huge portion of the startup’s customer base. So it makes sense.
Besides families who are using the platform to book a large suite instead of traditional connecting rooms, the two other large customer bases are company executives who want to each have their own room but share a common space for work, and celebration groups like bachelor parties and birthdays.
Building on this celebration trend, the company has started offering concierge services to guests – like VIP reservations at restaurants and clubs. Hotels have also started asking about promoting on-property deals (like show tickets) via Suiteness’ concierge service, which could eventually turn into a substantial secondary revenue source for the company.
In terms of growth, Las Vegas has been the company’s most popular city so far – which makes sense, considering how many suites are in the city’s room inventory. Suiteness also says that a new customer is signing up for the platform every 4 minutes.