Alibaba-Backed Shiji Expands to Hotels Outside of China


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Beijing-based Shiji serves more than 47,000 hotels outside of China. This is the first time it has spoken candidly with independent English-language media about its acquisition strategy. This year its subsidiaries have won deals with MGM Resorts, Radisson, and other major brands. Reading between the lines, it has big plans in the works.

Shiji, the hospitality tech giant of China, has been expanding its global push since February — when it announced a $486 million investment from e-commerce powerhouse Alibaba Group.

Shiji, which has 20 foreign subsidiaries, has in the past month acquired StayNTouch, a hotel tech services provider, and Concept Software Systems, a retail tech provider for golf, spa, and other activities. A few months ago, it bought out the remaining shareholders of SnapShot, an analytics dashboard.

Shiji recently disclosed its backing of Kalibri Labs, a data-based hotel revenue consultancy. It has been rumored to be bidding this month to invest in Leonardo, a company that helps hotels manage their visual assets, such as photos of rooms.

In China, Shiji is responsible for at least 60 percent of the market share for enterprise software services among upscale and international hotels and luxury retailers. About 13,000 Chinese hotels use Shiji-networked systems, including many global brands.

Outside China, about 47,000 properties use products or services from Shiji Group. More than 100,000 hotels worldwide connect to Shiji's inventory distribution system.

The company now looks overseas for growth, with the blessing of e-commerce giant Alibaba, which has a 13.07 percent stake.

By the end of this year, Shiji expects to have more than 500 employees outside of China — a headcount that has grown from a negligible number during the past four years.

Analysts following the public company estimate that Shiji will generate about $481 million in revenue for the year through December 30, 2018. That puts it second in hospitality tech sales leadership to Oracle Hospitality, which analysts estimate generated about $1.8 billion in revenue in 2017.

By dollar volume, they are the world's largest hospitality tech companies.

Oracle and Shiji have helped each other.

Until recently, Beijing-based Shiji had focused on China as its market. For 15 years, it has been a reseller of the Opera property management system, which fell into Oracle Hospitality's hands when Oracle acquired Micros Systems in 2014. A few months ago Oracle renewed the resale partnership with Shiji.

On its own Shiji has provided supplementary software integrations and hardware like point-of-sale solutions to hotels in China.

Let's cover Shiji's recent Western acquisitions. Then we'll explore the company'