Introducing Skipper

A new network for hotels

Independent hotels have a huge problem: they struggle to convert customers directly. Despite offering the experiences travelers covet more than ever, their guests instead continue to book through intermediaries, like online travel agencies, often at 20%+ commission rates. This dynamic has led chains like Marriott or Hilton to increase their market share from 33% to 70% of the US market over the past 30 years.

That’s why we are building Skipper, a new network for hotels, to give independent hotel owners the tools they need to compete with large chains and online travel agencies and thrive on their own.

Today, we are announcing the first part of that journey: a streamlined booking engine, natively embedded on the hotel website, with alternative payment methods like Google Pay, to make booking easy. We have launched this product with early design customers and have seen up to a 40% increase in conversions.

Next, we focus on building a network of hotels leveraging our booking technology to offer shared guest identity and profiles. Currently, hotels do not understand guest preferences when they arrive at the hotel website. Skipper’s network will equip hotels with guest details, preferences, stay history, and lifetime value. This will offer hoteliers a complete view of their guests and enable personalized offers & rewards to increase conversions and delight guests further. As more hotels and guests join, the network will become more powerful. And most importantly, the hotel will own the relationship with the guest — putting the power back in the hands of the hotel and not the chains and OTAs.

Our First Funding Led By Gradient Ventures

To build these tools, we have raised $5.8M in seed funding led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s venture fund, with participation from Pear.VC, Wayfinder, Uncommon Capital, ERA, Derive Ventures, angels Ryan Simonetti (Convene), Neil Parikh (Casper), Aaron Frank (Final), and other leaders in tech and hospitality.

“I made the investment in Skipper because I saw the big opportunity in what they’re doing… They would be able to not only build new tech but work with existing systems as well.”
- Wen Wen Lam, Gradient Ventures

And we have seen strong demand before coming out of stealth and have already partnered with leading hotels, ownership groups, and management companies to bring our shared dream to life.

Over the past six months, we have tripled our engineering and product organizations. We have focused on building integrations with multiple existing hotel software providers, enabling easy implementation of Skipper for our customers.

Skipper is excited to deliver the booking experience travelers deserve while assisting owners in improving profitability by creating our new network.