Imbiba invests £1.25m into hospitality tech Wireless Social
Wireless Social is the UK’s leading guest Wi-Fi provider. Having operated in the hospitality sector for over six years, the business now works with over 4,000 client brands & businesses in the UK and US. Clients range from small independents through to some of the largest hospitality brands. The specialist technology developed by Wireless Social is now embedded into the daily operations of many leading brands, such as Heineken, Carluccio’s, Young’s, TGI Fridays, Bella Italia, Frankie & Benny’s, Revolution Bars, Leon, Itsu, and Wagamama.
Wireless Social’s guest Wi-Fi and analytics platform has fast become an industry standard due to easy integration and collaboration with other leading hospitality technology providers. The solution integrates with over fifty CRM, marketing, and single customer view platforms, and the data collected from the Wi-Fi service is now widely recognised as the best source of GDPR compliant data, underpinning their customers’ marketing and guest engagement campaigns.
Across all venues, the guest Wi-Fi platform sees over one million new users logging in each month and has reached over twenty million registered users in total. The thirty million milestone is expected by the summer of 2020.
Imbiba is a specialist investor in the UK leisure and hospitality market. As entrepreneurs backing entrepreneurs, Imbiba offers best in class support in key areas of property, strategic marketing and operational-level finance for bars, restaurants and UK leisure businesses. This latest investment of £1.25m is Imbiba’s first in a technology-based business, recognising the positive contribution that Wireless Social has made to the sector and the opportunity they possess to grow in both domestic and international markets.
Darrel Connell, Partner at Imbiba commented, ‘We are delighted to partner with the team at Wireless Social. Our investment enables ongoing tech innovation, including the development of a new-to-market platform designed to simplify brand-sponsored email and SMS campaigns in real time, when consumers are in the venues. This platform, branded Hedgehog, is a key sales-enabled marketing tool and meets the high demand we see from a significant range of leisure and hospitality brands. Our support will also help create a number of key jobs as the Chorley-based tech firm expands its Sales, Product Development, Customer Support, and Marketing departments. Wireless Social has expansion plans for the US market where there is a significant opportunity for their hospitality-focused service and transformative Hedgehog solution.’
Julian Ross commented, “Over the last twelve months, Wireless Social has seen some significant growth in the number of new customers and the number of big brand operators we now work with. We love the hospitality sector and our number one focus is providing solutions to help operators delight their guests with a more personalised approach to marketing. The investment from Imbiba is going to support this goal by allowing us to develop even better solutions and to ensure we have the right people in place to support our growing customer base. I am thrilled to be working with the Imbiba team. Their experience and contacts within the sector are invaluable to our continued success.”
For further information, please contact Angus Stewart at Imbiba: angus@imbiba.com