Online budget hotels booking platform RedDoorz has expanded into the Philippines – its third market in the South-east Asian region – after Singapore and Indonesia.
The company will be investing US$5 million into the Philippine market, to grow its footprint to 100 properties over the next 12 months.
Amit Saberwal, founder and CEO, RedDoorz, said in a statement: “Our expansion into the Philippines came as a natural progression for RedDoorz, where like our first market in Indonesia showed many similarities and thus the potential for a vibrant domestic travel and hospitality industry.
“Following our fresh funding earlier this year, we realised that the Philippines held a strong demand for hotel rooms not only for tourists but also for business travellers. We felt that it was timely for us to make the conclusive move to start expanding here – especially seeing how boisterous the budget hospitality sector has been in recent years,” he added.
Along with its entry into the Philippines, RedDoorz will also be introducing a new category of properties, RedDoorz Premium. Launched this month, RedDoorz Premium are properties that are designed for the budget business traveller – not only strategically located close to business districts but have more amenities than the other two existing categories RedDoorz and RedDoorz Plus on the platform.
Commenting on the new addition of property categorisation, Rishabh Singhi, chief operating officer, RedDoorz, said: “This introduction of Premium properties came with our observation of how the Filipino concept of a ‘condotel’ had seen a remarkable growth in the Philippines over the past decade.
“The aim of this new category is to target the business traveller who looks for certain amenities like good Wi-Fi connection, location closer to business districts and other amenities. We see this as a strong category as we expand into other South-east Asian cities where there is an influx of business travellers.”
Headquartered in Singapore, RedDoorz recently raised its Pre-Series B round of US$11 million as an additional investment from Asia Investment Fund of Susquehanna International Group, International Finance Corporation (private investment arm of World Bank Group), InnoVen Capital (venture lending firm owned by Temasek Holdings and United Overseas Bank), and Jungle Ventures – all of which had invested in past funding rounds. This fundraise also saw new investors DeepSky Capital, FengHe Group, Hendale Capital as well as other investors.
