ChinaTravelNews – Changsha-based property management system (PMS) developer Gold Swan Software received RMB10 million (approx: US$1.6 million) in a Pre-A financing round that brings its estimated value up to RMB100 million (approx: US$16.1 million).
Gold Swan also confirmed plans to go public, aiming to register on China’s New Third Board by the end of 2016.
Becoming the “Shiji Network” of medium and small-sized hotels
“Over the last three years, our revenue has been growing at an annual rate of over 90% while our users increased to over 30,000 hotels with 12,000 active users. We recorded over RMB7 million in annual revenue in 2014 and expect our annual revenue to exceed RMB12 million this year,” Gold Swan’s CEO Lihua Xiao said.
Golden Swan’s users are mostly medium- and small-sized hotels in third- to sixth-tier Chinese cities, and the software developer is aiming to become the “Shiji Network” (top Chinese PMS and Alibaba partner) of medium- and small-sized hotels.
“We do have a presence in first- and second-tier cities because there are too many well-established players and so we don't see them as our core areas. However we have been able to barricade our business interests and secure solid channels among independent hotels in third- to sixth-tier cities over the years,” Mr. Xiao said.
Gold Swan now has over 1,000 IT firms as commissioned partners to provide local service to clients in 333 Chinese towns.
Mr. Xiao said Golden Swan would invest the latest funding mainly in development and the market. “Our goal is to become the leader in the market of medium- and small-sized hotels in third- to sixth-tier cities within the next three years,” he said.
Starting small and scaling up
Golden Swans is now testing the small-scale business version of its latest product – a private cloud PMS suite – and expects to release the large-scale business version in December.
“Our products are developed on two principles: providing needs-based user solutions and helping hotels to achieve operational targets,” Mr. Xiao said.
The PMS market is increasingly crowded, as Alibaba invested in Shiji Technology in the beginning of 2014, followed by Shiji’s acquisition of Armitage’s Pegasus PMS and Ctrip’s acquisition of PMS Jiachi Software.
Newcomers BeyondHost and Green Cloud Software’s PMS iHotel have become increasingly active and eLong launched two free PMS services, Zhuzher and Yunzhanggui on the market recently.
As competition will undoubtedly heat up, technological advances and successful marketing in areas like "cloud", "big data" and"online + " will separate the men from the boys among PMS suppliers.
(Report by Xianhao Zeng)
(Translation by David)
