Bookassist, an Irish firm that operates an online booking engine for hotels in eight countries, is preparing to seek funding to grow its business outside of Ireland, with a particular focus on Spain and South America.

The company has been in operation since 1994, initially starting life as a series of online travel guides before developing an online booking engine for hotels in the late 1990s.

In 2000, Bookassist was launched as an online platform and booking engine for hotels. Since then, the company has broadened its focus and now provides a host of software products to the hotel sector.

Bookassist’s managing director, Des O’Mahony, said the company’s primary focus to date had been on building its Irish business, but said the focus was shifting towards developing the business, using the same model, in other countries.

‘‘The company is expanding rapidly and is now actively looking for partners in the industry who can bring our technology to a greater audience, whether through capital injection or merger,” he said. ‘‘We are commencing the strategic planning that would be necessary for a funding round, but we don’t have a specific target in place as yet,” said O’Malley.

Bookassist’s technology provides an assortment of functions in addition to its online booking engine.

It allows hotels to produce reports to analyse booking patterns, include customer-generated content on their website, optimise their website and search engine results, and deliver text messages to customers with booking information and directions to the hotel.

The company has more than 500 hotels in Ireland on its booking system, which represents in excess of 35 per cent of the Irish market, according to O’Mahony.

‘‘Ireland is quite saturated,” he said. ‘‘We have a very good foothold in the Irish market and we want to keep that, but we are not going to double the number of hotels we have here.”

In the last year and a half, the company has opened five new international offices and added 16 new staff, bringing total staff numbers to about 40.

‘‘All of that has been funded internally,” O’Mahony said.

‘‘Our other major markets are not as evolved as the Irish one would be. In Spain we have a similar amount of hotels as in Ireland, but as part of the Spanish market that is minuscule. In Scotland we have 150 hotels or so and in the Czech Republic we have 100 hotels. We have just opened offices in Italy, Poland and France.”

One of the latest targets for the firm is Argentina, where the company has more than 100 hotel clients. ‘‘We view South America as potentially a very big growth area,” said O’Mahony. ‘‘There is a huge amount of internal traffic in the market. It is not necessarily that you are looking at bringing people from Europe.”

The company is wholly owned by its six shareholders and, to date, has been self financing.

‘‘Instead of having to go for investors, we have used revenues to build the company,” he said. ‘‘The company has done quite well. From day one, we have been in profit. We have consistently generated a healthy margin.”

Last year, the company’s clients generated revenues of €48 million via its online booking system.

‘‘We take commission,” said O’Mahony. ‘‘That’s how we operate. The beauty of our model for a hotel is that if we don’t generate bookings, we don’t get paid. We have no other charges whatsoever,” he said.

The level of commission charged varies from client to client, with O’Mahony saying that all clients are charged ‘‘single figure’’ commission rates.

O’Mahony said the company’s Irish hotel clients generated revenues of between €100,000 and €1.2 million last year through Bookassist.

‘‘A lot has to do with their ability to embrace the medium,” he said. While the hotel industry may be facing tough times, O’Mahony said the online part of the market was continuing to expand due to the low cost base and ‘‘amplified return on investment’’.