€60m-a-year Limerick tech firm launches property websites in Asia-Pacific

21 Jan 2009

Limerick technology firm Avvio has launched two luxury property websites in Thailand, and currently supports 700 hotels worldwide.

The Enterprise Ireland-backed firm currently supports over 700 hotels throughout Ireland, the UK, Europe the Asia Pacific region, processing over 225,000 transactions per year, valued at in excess of €60m annually.

Avvio supports over 85pc of the five-star hotel market in Ireland, including Ashford Castle, Dromoland Castle and the K Club while International clients include the Chaaya Resort Group in the Maldives and the Small Luxury Hotels of the World brand.

This week the company has launched two websites aimed at the Thailand luxury villa market: www.lebayburi.com and www.phuketresortmanagement.com.

“The Asia Pacific market is very similar to the Irish market, with a significant dependency on both international and localised demand, plus there is a high level of fragmentation between international group brands and independent operators,” David Collins, commercial director, Avvio.com explained.

“This market represents a huge export opportunity for Avvio; importantly too for hotel and resort operators as well as property developers, the opportunity exists to harness the power of the web, so as to optimise both domestic demand as well as inbound tourism.

“Our software provides this essential reach at the heart of which is best-of-class innovation and proven e-solutions for tourism marketing,” Collins.

Avvio directly employs 40 personnel across sales, design, operations and R&D and is expected to quadruple turnover to €6m by 2010. It supports Ireland’s largest hotel chains including Maldron Hotels, Bewleys Hotels, Moran Hotels, Lynch Hotels and Carlton Hotels, also providing business development and reservations software also to UK groups Festival Hotels (Edinburgh) and Marlin Apartments (London).

Following extensive R&D investment, Avvio this month launched a best-of-class integrated CRM solution for hotels, and expects to announce significant client acquisitions in Ireland and the UK in the coming weeks.

“The industry can expect to go through further consolidation in the next 12 months as operators tighten their belts and refine their businesses.

“Most of our clients have embraced this challenge and, in fact, our more progressive clients have seen a year-on-year lift in online revenues.

“Going forward, hotels can and will survive, and strengthen their position by fundamentally addressing how they bring their product to market while retaining hard-won clients under increasingly competitive conditions – an integrated internet strategy such as Avvio deploys for our own clients – will enable this,” Collins said.

Caption: View of ‘The Residence’ from Avvio’s new property website: www.phuketresortmanagement.com

By John Kennedy

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com