Online hotel player books 19,000 rooms

9 Jul 2008

A Dublin-based online hotel booking engine has increased bookings by 40pc, from over 13,000 bookings in the first six months of 2007 to almost 19,000 bookings for the same period in 2008.

This represents almost €3.5 million-worth of hotel bookings in the six months just ended for Rathfarnham-based Roomex.com.

The managing director of Roomex.com, Jack Donaghy, explained the increase in bookings was due to significant online marketing campaigns with Google, Facebook and Pigsback.com, which substantially increased awareness of the Roomex.com brand.

Donaghy also cited the discounted prices and the repeat customer discount scheme for over 20,000 hotels worldwide on the new www.roomex.com website as being major factors for growth over the past six months.

Roomex.com has also added several new features already this year, including customer hotel reviews and 26 major city video travel guides.

Donaghy expects bookings to more than double again over the coming year.

“We expect to increase the number of hotels on our website to over 60,000 before the end of the year with even more discounts.

“On top of this, we are updating the way in which the website works, giving it more of an interactive ‘Web 2.0’ feel, which will make it even easier for our customers to find and book hotels around the world,” Donaghy added.

By John Kennedy

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

editorial@siliconrepublic.com