Oktogo.ru

A feature of the service is its orientation to the Russian-speaking user and hotel reservations in Russia . In total, the Oktogo.ru database contains 250 thousand hotels in 150 countries of the world. ^[2] Since March 2013, Oktogo.ru has also made available the airline reservation function ^[3] . In February 2013, Fast Company named Oktogo the most innovative Russian company in its rating “The World's Top 50 Most Innovative Companies 2013” ^[4] . In September 2012, Oktogo.ru won the “National Geographic Traveler Awards” in the “Best Internet Service” nomination ^[5] . In April 2013, the company became a resident of the Skolkovo Fund ^[6] . In June 2013, the project entered the top 10 Russian Startup Rating - a ranking of Russian startups in the field of IT , high-tech , biotechnology and medicine, a joint initiative of the Digital October Center and the GreenfieldProject team ^[7] . In September 2013, Oktogo.ru entered the 50 most effective venture startups in Russia according to the magazine Kommersant - Secret of the company . Indicators of growth dynamics, commercial success, recognition of investors and consumers ^{[8] were} evaluated. In November 2013, he was named the authoritative US-British IT blog Mashable among the 20 most high-profile Russian startups ^[9] .

The company’s income is generated by a commission from partner hotels, which averages 10-20 percent of the reservation amount ^{[10] [11]} . According to expert estimates, in 2012, Oktogo's turnover reached $ 30 million (in 2011 - $ 10 million). Moreover, over 60% of this amount was received due to the reservation of Russian hotels ^[10] . Oktogo.ru plans to reach its payback in 2013 ^[12] . Oktogo.ru works both in the B2C segment and in B2B . In particular, Oktogo.ru has offline sales channels through cooperation with ZAO Russian Railways Service, Svyaznoy. Travel ”and the Transport Clearing House .

Investments

• In April 2011, Luxembourg-based Mangrove Capital Partners , French Ventech Capital and Russian ABRT invested $ 5 million in the online hotel reservation system Oktogo ^[13] . The Mangrove CP Foundation is also an investor and shareholder of Skype and KupiVIP . The number of shareholders included the founder of eDreams, Javier Perez Tennessa ^[14] . Investors received more than 20% of Oktogo, but “less control.” Business Oktogo.ru is estimated at more than $ 10 million ^[13] .
• In February 2012, Oktogo service received $ 10 million from the VTB Capital group of companies, whose share amounted to about 30-35 percent of the company. The cost of Oktogo.ru is estimated at about $ 30 million ^{[10] [15]} .
• In March 2013, Victor Sazhin Group of the Russian businessman Viktor Sazhin, together with other investors, invested $ 11 million in the resource. The third investment round Oktogo is estimated as the second largest transaction in the Russian segment of online travel. Participants did not disclose the cost of the business. However, according to expert estimates, given the high competition and a delayed return on payback, the company's value increased by no more than 30% ^[16] .
• In December 2013, the combined company Oktogo Group, which also included Travel.ru , announced the launch of the fourth round of investments. The new investor of the company was the VEB Innovation Fund ( Vnesheconombank Group) ^[17] . The transaction amount is estimated at $ 5 million ^[18] .

Since 2011, total investment in the Oktogo.ru project has amounted to $ 26 million dollars ^[19] .

The Oktogo.ru platform for booking hotels is used by the Danish airline search engine momondo ^[20] , Russian Aviasales.ru and Biletix.ru ^[21] , travel portals Travel.ru ^[22] and TripAdvisor.com ^[23] . A partnership agreement with Tripadvisor was signed in 2011, thanks to which this international travel service entered the Russian market. More than 50 million reviews of hotels around the world, automatically translated into Russian, became available to Oktogo.ru audiences ^[23] . In turn, the Oktogo.ru service provided the partner with its database of hotels and reviews of Russians ^{[14] [24]} . Oktogo.ru also collaborates with the international meta-search engines HotelsCombined ^[25] , Wego and Kayak.ru ^[26] , and there are partnership programs with the banks of Tinkoff Bank ^[27] and Citibank ^[28] . In 2011, an agreement was signed with the company Russian Railways Service CJSC, which owns 42 service centers located at railway stations of large cities of Russia ^[29] . In 2012, the Transport Clearing Chamber became a partner of Oktogo. In accordance with the agreement on joint activities, travel agencies accredited with TCH gained access to the Oktogo.ru hotel database ^[30] . The Oktogo.ru hotel database also uses Svyaznoy. Travel ”is a division of Svyaznoy . ^[31] In September 2013, Oktogo.ru officially announced the purchase of Travel.ru, the Russian travel information portal ^[32] . The amount of the transaction by the parties is not announced, and is estimated by independent experts at $ 2 million ^[33] . According to company forecasts, the combined site of the two services can attract about three million unique visitors per month, which will make it the largest in the online tourism market in Russia ^[34] .

In January 2012, Oktogo.ru received criticism for the mathematical overestimation of the performance of partnership contracts and financial indicators. The data that caused distrust were published in the Kommersant newspaper on December 5, 2011. In particular, it was stated that Oktogo.ru has 1,500 direct contracts with Russian hotels, the number of which is planned to be increased to 2.5 thousand by the end of 2011 ^[14] . Later Oktogo.ru will publish a comment stating that the journalist made a mistake. The forecasts concerned the spring of 2012 ^[12] .

Also criticism is caused by the quality of translation of reviews of hotels left by foreign users. These reviews appeared on the site as a result of a partnership agreement with TripAdvisor in 2011 ^[14] .

Since February 25, 2017, the Oktogo.ru portal has not been opened, the support phone number for the online booking service is not responding. At the same time, the Oktogo.net portal registered in Cyprus is still available for users. In the official service communities on Facebook and VKontakte, the latest publications were made in early January. Users in the comments write about the lack of feedback with company employees for a month. Hoteliers have been reporting debts for hotel bookings since September last year. ^[one]

Oktogo.ru in Yandex. Catalog