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Regardless of whether it concerns a business trip or a holiday, a hotel room preferably meets the expectations of your initial booking as much as possible. To assist hotels in offering that ideal image and to help prevent disappointment and dissatisfaction among their guests, we have launched a digital tool that allows hotel guests to select and guarantee their specific hotel room based on a detailed floorplan and room overview for only a small supplement. By linking that information to other characteristics, hotels can work more efficiently, optimize their guest experience and achieve greater returns.
Our founder’s story
Everything started with a road trip through Italy with my wife. Due to my experience in the hotel industry, choosing the perfect hotel is very important to me. I’m a real hospitality addict and only want the very best for my family: beautiful hotels, great rooms, nice views,… After an eight-hour drive, we arrived at the first hotel. We enjoyed a warm welcome but when the door to our room opened, we were in for a great disappointment: the promised sea view was blocked by a tree. What an anticlimax! I will never forget the disappointment in the eyes of my wife at that moment.
From my experience in hospitality, I started thinking about how I could protect others from this disappointment. The evacuation plan you find in hotels on every floor brought me to the idea of developing a tool that allows you to select a hotel room according to your wishes. “If I had been able to view that floor plan in advance, I could have chosen a particular room myself. I would happily have paid a supplement for that.” We are used to choosing our seat when travelling by plane, so why not choose our own room when staying in a hotel?
The Platform
There are already a number of digital tools that hotels use to upsell guests to a higher room category in the booking process. ExpectMe deviates from this because we focus mainly on room allocation within the same category of the initial booking. Thanks to the detailed information, we assure guests that they can make the perfect room choice. As the guest is taken through an intuitive step-by-step process, they are presented with different upsell opportunities along the way.
A couple of days prior to arrival, the platform will extract the necessary booking information out the property management system in order to give the guest the opportunity to optimize their stay by room allocation. The guest selects the preferred room and, optionally, any additional services. After final confirmation, the data will be sent straight away back to the hotel.
During the process, all data is encrypted and no personal data will be saved unless permission was given. Our customers expect us to ensure that data is handled very carefully, both from a security and a privacy perspective. For this reason we have designed ExpectMe from the ground up according to the latest industry best practices concerning security and privacy.
About us
We started in March 2021 with 3 ambitious individuals pursuing their ambitions.
The idea of ExpectMe started with our founder and CEO Roeland Verhamme, who has several years of experience within hotels from international hotel chains. After a couple of years, he felt that it was time to move on and launched his first own company in a small castle near Antwerp. It is clear that he has experience in entrepreneurship and hospitality, but he has no clue how software works.
One of his strengths is bringing the right people together. Alone is still alone. You need a strong team, you need to be able to brainstorm about certain challenges.
For the technical operation of our platform, we count on our co-founder and CTO Frank Smits. Frank is an IT architect with more than 7 years of experience in cloud technology. He is a man with a clear vision of the future, a good friend of Roeland and has a lot of experience in the IT world.
Our third co-founder and COO is Jeroen Vaassen. Jeroen has over 20 years of experience within Hospitality. He held various leadership roles at international hotel chains globally. He is our expert when it comes to revenue management, commercial strategies and operational excellence.
Another important factor that accelerates our growth is the strong established advisory board we can count on, consisting of world class individuals.
And last but not least we are part of imec.istart, the #1 accelerator program in Europe for tech startups. Via imec.istart, ExpectMe gains access to an international network of experts, investors, mentors and coaches who help boost the company’s growth.
Meet the founding team
"Things don't just happen, you make them happen." Embracing this ethos, Roeland Verhamme founded ExpectMe, an intuitive solution that brings room selection to hotels, much like seat selection on airlines. This product not only personalises the guest experience and opens hidden revenue streams for hoteliers, but also addresses key challenges such as front desk workload and direct booking strategy. Roeland's background in hotel operations and sales has been key in developing this solution, which integrates with leading, cloud-based PMS for a swift, seamless adoption. Beyond this venture, his passions lie in hospitality, travel, entrepreneurship, and cherishing moments with family.
Frank has a passion for entrepreneurship and everything related to IT. He has over 7 years of expertise in IT architecture and Cloud Technology. He is always looking for the next innovating solutions.
Jeroen has more than 20 years of experience in the International hospitality business, specializing in commercial strategy, revenue management, and operational leadership. After several corporate roles at international brands, he works as an entrepreneur with chains, independent hotels, and travel technology startups.
A no-nonsense change-maker with a global mindset: Jeroen is passionate about operating in multi-cultural environments, talent development, and building a solid foundation for sustainable growth together with the team.
Meet our partners
Start it @KBC fast-tracks your growth as a startup and as an entrepreneur. All you need to bring is your motivation and desire to make a positive impact on the world. We provide you with mentors and partners to guide you, personalized coaching to help you through your growing pains, a huge network to tap into, and so much more. You’ll bolster your market validation, business development, sales and fundraising strategies. After a one-year journey designed to bring you closer to your ambitions, you’ll stay part of the community long-term.
Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship is the contact point for entrepreneurs in Flanders. We encourage and support innovation and entrepreneurship, and contribute to a favourable business climate. By being a one-stop-shop, we build a bridge towards stronger entrepreneurship.
Imec.istart offers tech startups pre-seed funding and tailored support to succeed and grow globally. Since 2011, we have invested in more than 200 companies. Every year, we select around 30 high potential startups to join our 12-month program in Belgium. And as an investor, we’re in for the long run. Together with the imec.istart alumni network, we continue to help founders on their entrepreneurial journey ... and beyond.
We facilitate investment projects in Flanders and we give support to Flemish export companies.
Antwerp is a cosmopolitan city with a small footprint in the heart of Europe. It’s located right on the crossroads where northern and southern cultures meet, which makes the city the ideal testing ground for new products, designs or retail concepts. Compared to other European cities, living and working in Antwerp is still cheap. Here, you will find all the tools for success, right at your doorstep. Networks, infrastructure, competences and support organisations are available at a metropolitan scale, but with the easy access of a compact town. In short; Antwerp is a city big enough to matter, small enough to care.
