As another summer comes to an end across Europe, a new era begins for the global hotel industry’s leading cloud platform, SiteMinder, with the appointment of Marco Rosso, a hospitality and e-commerce passionate who joins the company as SiteMinder’s new country manager for Spain.
The appointment sees Marco take over a market where SiteMinder has dominated the hotel technology industry for nearly a decade, securing deals with some of the country’s largest hotel chains as well as thousands of independent, boutique and family-run hotel businesses which received more than 1.5 million reservations worth over €600 million in hotel revenue this summer.
Marco says his top priority is to ensure hotels realise how best to capitalise on technology to win more guests and open a future where keeping up with the digital world, while benefiting from a growing revenue stream, is simple.
“While this past summer saw a number of travellers opt for other destinations over spending time under the Marbella and Ibiza sun, Spain remains the third most visited tourist destination in the world and its potential is undeniable. Where some may see this trend as troubling, I see a chance for Spanish hotels to explore new strategies and the technologies that will enable them to reach different types of guests from new parts of the world,” says Mr Rosso.
Born into a long line of hoteliers where hospitality and tourism were not only the family business but a way of life, Marco began his career at hotels and travel companies before bringing his expertise to Triptease in 2015, where he helped to expand the SaaS company’s presence across Europe. As the country manager for SiteMinder in Spain, Marco inherits an established market where SiteMinder is now a significant contributor to the total online revenue generated by hotels in the country.
According to Marco, the journey is only beginning as more hotels become hungry for innovation and success.
“We live in a digital world and Spanish hoteliers are increasingly aware of the importance of how their hotel brand is positioned to the market. Many hotels still operate with a complicated online reservations process, but there is a real opportunity to change that with the right tools in place,” Mr Rosso says.
Marco’s appointment comes as SiteMinder continues its rapid expansion globally and the former head of Spain, Mateus Coelho, leads SiteMinder in Brazil and Portugal – the two other markets he has led for more than two years – on a more dedicated basis.
