Budget Hotel Company RedDoorz to Add 11 More Hotels in Singapore The company is poised to become the second-largest hotel chain in Singapore
By Aparajita Saxena •
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Budget hotel company, RedDoorz, plans to add 11 more hotels to its Singapore network by the end of 2020, it said on Tuesday, taking the total tally of properties its operates in the city-state to 29, and becoming the second-largest hotel chain in the country.
The company operates 1,500 properties over more than 100 cities across Southeast Asia, and leads the affordable-accommodation sector in the region. It partners with property owners who prefer not to run day-to-day hotel operations, and provides operational resources, such as an online booking platform, hotel staff, and other tech solutions such as an inventory management platform.
"Through our efforts in making standardised affordable accommodation more easily and readily available, we aim to encourage more travellers to visit Singapore, whether for work or for leisure," said Amit Saberwal, founder and chief executive officer of RedDoorz.
At least 50 percent of Southeast Asia travellers visit Singapore more than once, a Singapore tourism board report from 2017 showed, adding at least 75 percent of Indonesians have made repeated visits to the country.
Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, where RedDoorz has operations, are among the top 15 travel destinations in the world, a report by the Singapore tourism board stated, a positive sign for the company that largely depends on tourism for business. Indonesia has also been a particularly high-growth market for the company.
The Singapore-based company has raised around $140 million over seven funding rounds since 2015 when it was founded, from investors including Rakuten, Jungle Ventures, and Asia Partners Fund, according to Crunchbase.
Its latest series C funding round was on August 18, 2019, and its app has over 300,000 monthly downloads.
RedDoorz competes in the region with Softbank-backed bigger rival Oyo, which is aggressively entering new markets such as Europe. However, Saberwal earlier this year told TechCruch in an interview that he wasn't necessarily threatened by Oyo's success; on the contrary, Oyo's success is a testament that there is enough room for more players in the budget accommodation space, he was reported as saying.
