Enter Benny, a self-proclaimed revolutionist and disruptor in the hotel and travel agency space on a mission to “break free from the powers of the OTA”. Founded by Sage45 which is made up of a team of hotel experts, Benny is an invite-only community where travellers become agents for independent hotels. They do that by recommending favourite hotels, sharing insider tips, inviting friends to book at exclusive rates. Their compensation? Five percent of total revenue on each booking their referrals make.
Founder and President of Sage45 Jimmy Suh (pictured left), who has been in the hotel business for more than 20 years, said in an interview with WiT, that his idea for Benny was rooted in the many occasions his friends and family would approach him for recommendations and special deals for hotel stays, since he was in the business.
“Because I was in the hotel business, I was asked constantly by friends and family where they should stay. Of course, they trusted my recommendations more than they would the reviews they saw on TripAdvisor or Expedia. Then when I was working at The Standard Hotels, the same pattern existed for my team members. And even people outside the industry were saying they were often asked to recommend hotels. In this day and age, and especially with social media, this is how people are discovering the latest and the greatest independent hotels,” said Suh.
He finally decided he needed to “capitalise on the situation”. At the Standard Hotels, he started a programme called Friends with Benefits and the programme just grew virally and today, it represents nearly 10 percent of total revenue for the hotel group.
Seeing that despite this obvious trend, there is no “single platform that truly capitalises on that customer behaviour and actually rewards the true travel agent which is the friend or family or the social influencer”, Suh decided he had to do this – create Benny, the next generation of travel agent.
Expounding on Benny’s revolution mission, Suh said, “The independent hotels in the lifestyle space have a very contentious relationship with the OTAs. The hotels don’t appreciate having to be plastered against hundreds of other hotels in the various destinations and more often than not, the OTAs attract guests that don’t really understand the unique experience and the brand proposition that these indie hotels bring.
The hotels lose because often the wrong customers get delivered and they become the ‘one-and-done’ customers. On the customers’ end, because of this perception and the history with the OTA customer, as soon as they step up to the hotel and the hotel sees they came from say Expedia, they just assume that person is not going to come back to the hotel, and so the customer gets second class service. Everyone loses.
However, in our model, it has been proven that the customer has a higher lifetime value – they stay more often and they spend more when they are on the property and they have a better experience.”
While Benny is now only in five US cities with about 42 live hotel listings and some 170 US-based agents signed up, it has global plans.
“We are looking at being in Canada and Europe this year, and Asia definitely by 2021,” said Suh. Where they select their markets will be driven by demand from the US.
Suh said Benny has received an overwhelming response from the hotels. They have signed 54 hotels but only 42 are currently live, with the others pending administrative processing.
On the agency side, 170 agents have signed up and another 300 applicants have submitted their profiles in the three weeks after launch.
“We want to be careful in making sure we accepted agents who we feel truly represented the voice of the hotels that they were recommending,” explained Suh of the process.
Benny was incubated with Standard Hotels as its seed funder and they remain the main stakeholder. It has raised US$5 million from SWaN and Legend Venture Partners and various independent investors, including himself.
“We will continuing our capital network conversations and we will continue raising funds as early as third quarter this year,” said Suh.
Suh refuses to brand himself a potential serial entrepreneur but said this is purely a “passion play” coupled with “great industry experience” that he has.
“I launched this company because I see how travel breaks down barriers and discrimination and I see how people become better versions of themselves when they travel. This is why I did it. It is a work of passion,” said Suh.
