SiteMinder, a relatively underground hotel booking software platform, has hit one of the biggest milestones for a high-growth tech company, with its recurring revenue hitting over $100 million.
While few people outside travel tech circles know its name, SiteMinder has a reputation as the leading player in its field globally.
The business provides the core technology that has allowed websites such as Agoda and Booking.com to boom, connecting hotels' back-end systems to those of the booking websites so all systems can be updated simultaneously regardless of whether a booking is made via the hotel or a third-party site.
SiteMinder's annual revenue run rate of $100 million is often the threshold for a company to become a unicorn (a $1 billion-plus company), a possibility when it completes its next capital raising.
Co-Founder and Managing Director Mike Ford said hitting the $100 million milestone was something many software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies never achieved.
"There's a few things that have resulted in us not being noticed as much … in sectors like fintech there's a natural sexiness. Perhaps the broad appeal of online travel tech in the business-to-business sense isn't as hot a topic," he said.
"We're also fairly humble guys and we're a vertical-focused player. But it's important for us to take our place in the local Sydney market because we're an employer developing cutting-edge tech."
The company counts 35,000 hotels as customers across more than 160 countries, with 80 per cent of its revenue coming from offshore. It processes 87 million hotel reservations a year, equating to $38 billion worth of hotel, Airbnb or bed and breakfast stays.
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