How EFSI benefits SMEs in Europe - Bank of Ireland case study: Roomex (Ireland), hospitality ICT

“Many companies can have a significant percentage of staff staying in hotels at any given time”, explains Jack Donaghy, CEO of Roomex, a Dublin-based company that offers practical and cost-effective solutions for business travel. “Our clients usually spend anything from EUR 100,000 to more than EUR 1 million every year on hotels alone,” he adds.

Roomex operates a global hotel-booking platform for corporate clients, taking care of all the payments and paperwork. “We can save time and costs for our customers. They don’t have to spend time searching, making calls, comparing prices”, Jack explains. “We book hotels below market rates with no charges to our customer, and they only have to deal with a single periodical invoice from us, covering multiple business trips. Last year we estimated the savings we delivered at around 21% compared to market rates.”

In addition, Roomex provides companies with complete control and visibility over spending. “Some companies don’t monitor their travel spending closely, despite it being a significant operational cost”, Jack explains, “Roomex offers savings and efficiency, but also live reporting and benchmarking”.

In order to continue improving the product and scale-up the business, Roomex secured financial support in the form of a loan from the Bank of Ireland, backed by EIF. “This was by far the best option for us, as a fast-growing company”, says Jack. “We used the loan to expand the team, and we expect to double the number of developers by the end of 2018.” With this financing, the company has established an extensive roadmap for product development, as it continues to grow in size and number of customers. “We are looking to expand into new markets and deliver new services”, Jack explains, “in addition to reducing costs, we want to save our clients from having to deal with any kind of paperwork or reimbursements to employees, which means expanding our product range to include things like per diem expenses, for example”.

Company: Roomex (Ireland)

Type of business: hospitality; ICT

EIF financing: InnovFin SMEG, EFSI

Financial intermediary: Bank of Ireland

For further information abiout EIF intermediaries in Czech Republic, please refer to: http://www.eif.org/what_we_do/where/ie