FLEETCOR Purchases Lodging Provider Roomex To Boost B2B Lodging

Business payment company FLEETCOR has said it will be buying European workforce lodging provider Roomex, which will help the company add to its lodging business and help it expand more internationally, a press release said.

Roomex is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland and has 600 workforce business customers, who have stayed in around 50,000 hotels.

FLEETCOR’s lodging business is able to book people into hotels every night and it works with 45,000 hotels mostly in the U.S., providing customers with savings, specialized controls and consolidated invoices.

“Roomex gives us a very similar workforce lodging business in Europe,” said Ron Clarke, chairman and chief executive officer, FLEETCOR Technologies, Inc. “It provides us a base of operations, expertise and a hotel network from which we can build out the lodging business across Europe while leveraging the significant client base we already have there.”

Meanwhile, Garry Moroney, Roomex CEO, said the company was attracted to FLEETCOR’s “distribution scale, payment solutions and client relationships,” which will help Roomex grow more as a company.

FLEETCOR has made other acquisitions related to travel as of late, including buying airline software firm Levarti, which offers solutions for automating passenger disruptions, such as passenger notifications, flight rebookings, hotel accommodations and transfers and vouchers.

Read more: FLEETCOR Acquires Airline Software Company Levarti

In 2014, Levarti debuted its MAX software suite, which was picked up by global airlines looking to digitize their operations. The app offers passengers end-to-end digital experiences from check-in, during flight with contactless payments, and through to baggage claim.

Clarke was quoted at the time saying this acquisition would help out with a “complementary solution to further automate and streamline passenger disruption events for our airline clients.”

In other news surrounding hotel technology, specialized payment platform Paysafe has teamed with cloud-based software solution partner HotelKey to allow frictionless hotel payments for retail touchpoints as well as back-of-house work.

Read more: Paysafe, HotelKey Partner to Streamline Hotels’ Retail, B2B Payments

The collaboration intends to streamline in-person, card-present and card-not-present transactions for any hotel channels, including the front desk, bars, restaurants, gift shops and onsite events and catering. It will also help hotels with payments for operational needs like food and beverage orders and housekeeping supplies.