It’s a common and often-used adage in the world of startup entrepreneurship; an overnight success was ten years in the making. Yet fewer things are truer in the business of building companies that become symbols of innovation in their respective industries. To become the proverbial ‘overnight success’, founders have to walk a long and swinging tightrope for years, balancing over the abyss of failing to deliver growth, while holding the ever-heavier weighted pole that is their pivoting and growing business.
What may seem like a lifetime ago, more than three and a half years ago, we wrote one of our very first portfolio posts here on Vitosha Stories, about our investment in Quendoo. Back then, as we finalized one of the biggest investments from our Vitosha Fund I, we backed Quendoo with its first check, EUR 750,000, on the promise of taking the team’s already years-long experience with hotels and booking engines to new heights, developing and launching a comprehensive suite of digital tools for hotels to take back control of their revenue streams.
Three-plus years later, that promise is increasingly being fulfilled, thanks to the hard work and dedication of the founding team of Christophe Gater, Gorian Varbanov, and Tony Vidolov. Having launched the first iteration of Quendoo exactly two years ago, the company has since made an impressive mark in the business of resort hotels in Bulgaria and the region.
“In the first two years since launching, we have onboarded over 300 clients at Quendoo, the majority of which are in Bulgaria and include some of the biggest names in the industry”, says Gorian. “This includes the entirety of Albena Resort, one of the largest resorts on the Black Sea”, adds Christophe. “All in all, we’re currently managing over 32,500 rooms through Quendoo, handling more than EUR 6.5 million in bookings each month, and we’re just getting started”, says Christophe.
This summer, Quendoo closed a new investment round, with Vitosha adding EUR 200,000, and the Capital Investments Fund of the Bulgarian Development Bank leading with EUR 800,000. With its ongoing momentum and a fresh million of euros for growth, Quendoo has big plans.
As Christophe explains, “some of Quendoo’s existing clients save more than EUR 100,000 per month during the summer months, by using our bookings software and channel management solution. The next step is to expand the functionality, adding a marketplace for travel agents and tour operators, and to enter new lucrative markets that we’ve been preparing for launch for over a year now”.
The coming months at Quendoo will be exciting. Currently signing up its first three hotel clients in the UK, the company will be concurrently launching the B2B rates marketplace, as well a series of other new tools, relevant for the holiday accommodation markets of northern Europe.
“In the hotel industry, one-size-fits-all does not exist”, say Christophe and Gorian. “There are great differences between how city weekend breaks are booked, compared to summer beach holidays, for instance. The period in advance when people book, the flexibility on locations, the price sensitivity and the opportunities for upselling and cross-selling are all completely different for each accommodation segment and market. At Quendoo, our aim is to provide hotel owners with flexible tools to maximize value, delivering full control of inventory and bookings, while saving our clients millions in advertising costs, commission fees, and software licenses.”
It’s exciting times for team Quendoo in 2025 and beyond, as the company sets out to expand its operations, and bring value to hotel owners in new markets. At Vitosha, we’re proud to have supported the company’s growth so far, and can’t wait to see what the future holds.