Sweden, Malmo. March 11, 2020

Jos Schaap, former-CEO and founder of StayNTouch Inc (now part of Shiji Group), has joined the Board of Directors for Bookboost, the hotel guest messaging platform.

Schaap will provide advice, support and guidance to the BookBoost team as it expands its customer base and presence across Europe utilising his connections and thirty years of experience in hospitality technology. The industry stalwart sold the first mobile PMS, StayNTouch, to Shiji Group in 2018 leaving his position as CEO only in April last year. Following a Sabbatical Schaap is throwing himself back into the sector working with promising and innovative startups.

Co-founder and CEO of Bookboost, Daan de Bruijn connected with Schaap when he realised they both attended The Hotel School The Hague, , albeit at separate times, where they studied Hotel Management. He was keen to seek advice from the entrepreneur and former Micros Systems executive to get tips on how to grow the business to the same level of success achieved for StayNTouch. Schaap officially joined the Bookboost Board last month (January 2020).

"Hoteliers are old-fashioned in the way they deliver services, they're excellent at it, but they need to be where their guests are," said Schaap. "When digital messaging is done right it can add real value to the guest and provide a real service. What stands out about Bookboost is the team's commitment to providing support to hotels to deliver digital messaging to guests in a meaningful way. There's a real opportunity for hotels to become more efficient, provide relevant information conveniently with the chance to discreetly promote additional products and services to the guest.

"Very few hotels are using digital messaging, and it's hard to understand why - especially when digital messaging is less time-consuming. One staff member can manage multiple properties and provide personalised answers to guests, and with the huge number of common questions - hotels can automate, tailor and train responses relevant to each hotel."

Schaap believes that there is a lot of education needed on how hotels should engage and communicate with guests digitally, especially due to the speed of conversation and typical social niceties in messaging being redundant - where the directness of enquiries requires responses to provide only the information that matters.

"Having Jos join us as one of the Board is a real honour - he's got a lifetime of experience within the industry and his achievements with StayNTouch are admirable," said co-founder Daan de Bruijn. "We're taking the opportunity to learn as much as we can from him and make Bookboost the hotel's industry partner for guest messaging."

Bookboost guest messaging platform is used by hotel groups and independent hotels including Ruby Hotels, CityHub and CityBox and features in Mews Marketplace and Siteminder Hotel App Store with PMS connections to access customer data to act as a partial CRM for the hotel. Bookboost aims to create service through conversation providing a discrete approach to build trust and loyalty with guests.