Katanox, the travel accommodation distribution and fintech platform, has raised $ 5.7 million from a group of financial, hospitality, and tech entrepreneur family offices to overhaul and reconfigure B2B distribution in hospitality. The group of investors includes Rappi and Yuno co-founder Juan Pablo Ortega, co-founder of fintech Dimebox and current co-founder and CEO of Founda Jan Joost Kalff, and founder of hospitality tech iTesso Bas Blommaart.
In addition to its raise, Katanox brings industry veteran Rob Torres on as non-executive director. Rob brings over 20 years of experience and his vast travel industry network to the company. He will be working with the founding team to partner with global hotel brands.
“I am very excited to grow my relationship with the team and apply best practices from the programmatic advertising industry for B2B distribution in hospitality. The Katanox team is building an intriguing set of solutions to bring transparency that’s needed for the open distribution era,” said Rob Torres, non-executive director at Katanox.
The Katanox team combines innovative technology along with decades of expertise in payments, travel and programmatic media technology, to advance the future of B2B distribution in hospitality. Katanox addresses the $150 billion corporate travel market by streamlining and improving the distribution of travel accommodations, which has historically been controlled by Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s), Global Distribution Systems (GDS) and bedbanks.
“Out of necessity, we’ve seen many advancements and improvements in the travel sector spurred on by technology and digitalization. However, when it comes to lodging, it’s the safe middle men who are controlling the market and stifling growth,” said Mendel Senf, co-founder of Katanox. “We’re bringing much needed change to the market by putting power back in the hands of accommodation providers by empowering them to control their own destination via the Katanox platform.”