May 26, 2019 - A Croatian app is sitting quietly on the desks of some of the world’s most prolific investment offices, but unlike the pile of would-be unicorns, this start-up for luxury hotels is not gathering dust. Meet RoomOrders.
Leading hotel IT industry influencers The Tech Move reported today “Poor ROI & low demand has seen hotels discontinue their room service offerings, but at last week's #IHTF we met a Croatian start-up, RoomOrders, Inc, that claims it is ready to “Uberise” #hotel room service.”
After listing the solution’s features, they asked, “With Hilton & others coming on board, could this be an in-room dining disruptor?”
Indeed, RoomOrders has soft-launched in leading branded hotels like Hilton and Sheraton on three continents so far, but is so fresh on the market that its three months free period has yet to expire and thus has no income to report – apart from its pilot case Hilton Boston, US, where in-room dining order value shot up by over 30%.
“We’ve been trying to keep a lid on it, but news recently leaked and now we should introduce RoomOrders.com and explain what it’s all about,” said global head of marketing Eugene Brcic Jones, hinting that the company was expecting to announce some titillating news regarding funding in coming weeks.
Brcic Jones claimed the response at their first trade fair was “overwhelming.”
“It opened talks with partners for integration into hotel management systems as well as with venture capitalists, particularly from Asia,” he said.
OK, so what’s it all about then?
RoomOrders is basically an e-menu. A cloud solution for hotels which enables guests to order in-room dining from an illustrated digital menu, right off their own smart phones. All guests have to do, is scan a QR code with their phone camera and order much like they would any other popular food delivery service.
“The idea was to be an Uber - a solution tailored to the modern digital native, to the average person who cannot live without their smart phone and expects any kind of business they have with others to gel seamlessly with their current lifestyle and habits,” said Viktor Matic, owner of software company Ingemark and co-founder of RoomOrders.
The beautiful thing about start-ups is that they are unpredictable. They don’t just emerge from flashy corporate buildings or state-of-the-art warehouses in bustling developed cities, the innovation could emerge from a garage or a teenager’s bedroom in the slums of a third-world town. Usually all that is needed is an internet connection and computer device.
A tourist haven, with over 1000 islands in the pristine Adriatic, Croatia is a fitting place of origin for a hotel app. Although registered in Delaware, US, up to 30 developers in Croatia’s capital Zagreb had a hand in creating RoomOrders, churning through almost two years and two million dollars to get it to market. As well as in-room dining, the app has marketing features (user-generated content, like social media location and post sharing) and feedback analytics to help hotel quality assurance and continued improvement.
“We decided to take a chance on it because it was too hard to say no,” said Sheraton Zagreb General Manager Mario Susak. “There is no capital outlay and there is no disruption to our existing operations, so it makes sense to move to a solution which will phase out fixed telephones and improve guest experience. The risks were zero, potential high.”
Hilton Boston General Manager Ed Mroz said that RoomOrders helps solve the dilemma of outsourcing room orders or keeping it in-house as studies showed most trends of eliminating room service were a deal breaker for the vast majority of luxury hotel guests. “It’s no secret that it’s hard to maintain profitability of room service, RoomOrders offers several clear value-adds and improves bottom line for us.”
RoomOrders streamlines current processes in ordering food and beverages to hotel rooms. As it communicates directly to the hotel kitchen or restaurant digitally in any chosen language, it eliminates miscommunication with a concierge or receptionist, who may also not be familiar with the offering to cross or up-sell.
Seems easy, so why didn’t anybody else think of it?
“It’s not so simple to make a simple solution,” said architect of RoomOrders and co-founder Harris Dizdarevic. “In fact, the more simple and intuitional the solution, the more technically demanding the task to create it.” Dizdarevic explained that his team noticed that hotels were neglecting one of the most popular associations with hotels, alongside accommodation, and tended to be hotel-centric.
“They’re looking at internal problems that need to be resolved to make a guest’s stay more pleasant through the prism of the hotel,” said Harris. “We did the opposite,” he added. “We looked at the behaviour of guests and adapted our software to harmonise the relationship between the needs of a guest and the needs of the hotel.”
In-room dining hasn’t changed since it was introduced more than 50 years ago Brcic Jones said. He thinks the niche segment of the hotel industry, which brings in billions of dollars through some 190,000 branded hotels worldwide, is ripe for disruption.
“Guests don’t want to be trapped by hotels, or pledge loyalty or download apps,” he maintained. “They don’t want their world to stop at the doorstep of a hotel. They want an extension of their world inside the hotel, to continue doing everything through their own personal devices as they would out on the street, anywhere in the world. Seamlessly”
If early traction is anything to go by, RoomOrders appears to have done it.
The platform trialled in Hilton Boston six months ago and is now launching in Hilton Belgrade and Hilton’s flagship Asia-Pacific hotel, Hilton Sydney, at the end of the month. The hotels will add to Hilton Zagreb and Sheraton Zagreb as well as five local branded hotels in Dubrovnik.
More than a dozen individual hotels are expected to sign up by the end of June with a breakthrough on the cards with two US Real Estate Investment Trusts controlling well over 100 popular luxury hotel brands soon after. Success in Australia with a leading international chain is expected to lead to rapid expansion across Asia Pacific, according to assurances made to RoomOrders, said Matic.
Learn more about RoomOrders from the official website.
Looking for the latest in Croatian innovation? Check out the dedicated TCN Made in Croatia section.
