Porter & Sail buys mobile engagement service GuestDriven

· GuestDriven,Ideas2Market,Joel Yaffe

Digital hotel concierge service Porter & Sail has acquired fellow mobile hospitality technology provider GuestDriven. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. GuestDriven was created in 2011 to give hotels the opportunity to interact with guests via mobile apps and upsell products before and during a sale. The Montreal, Canada-based company landed $3 million in funding in February 2014 from Plaza Ventures, Real Ventures and Structure Capital in a bid to push its SaaS platform to hoteliers. Porter & Sail (TLabs here and backed by Philean Capital, Onlean Capital Ventures and angel investors) came out of beta testing in early-2016 with a similar proposition – consumer-facing mobile apps for hotels.

Analytics tools enable hotels to use the app’s data to learn more about their guests. Guest spending and preferences, previous stays, social demographics, and trip purpose are also collected. Guests can also use the app to request restaurant reservations and other concierge services from the hotel.

A number of GuestDriven staff (including founder and CEO Anthony Zebrowski-Rubin) are being retained to help with the transition of the business, but ultimately it will be consolidated into Porter & Sail and based in the US city of New York. Porter & Sail CEO, Caitlin Zaino, says: “With GuestDriven added onto our core business, Porter & Sail is one step closer to powering the entire guest journey and further connecting our partner hotels to them to drive revenue and augment guest stays.”