Lighthouse
Lighthouse (formerly OTA Insight) is a Ghent-founded AI-powered business intelligence platform for hospitality, Belgium's 5th Unicorn with a $2.4B valuation following a $370M Series C led by KKR in November 2024.
Founded in Ghent in 2012 by Gino Engels, Lighthouse began as OTA Insight and built one of the hospitality industry's most widely used revenue intelligence platforms. The product aggregates market data, competitor pricing, booking pace, and demand signals to help hotel revenue managers make better pricing and distribution decisions. Over time the company expanded from rate benchmarking into a broader business intelligence suite covering market forecasting and commercial strategy.
In November 2024, Lighthouse raised $370M in a Series C led by KKR, pushing its valuation to $2.4B and cementing its status as Belgium's 5th Unicorn. The company has relocated its headquarters to London but retains approximately 270 of its 700+ employees in Belgium, keeping a significant operational and engineering footprint in its home country.
The company's trajectory from a Ghent-founded startup to a multi-billion dollar global SaaS platform is one of the stronger examples in Belgian tech of a vertical AI product scaling to global market leadership.
Key People
Gino Engels - co-founder
Adriaan Coppens - CEO & Co-founder
Matthias Geeroms - co-founder, cfo
Funding History
- Series C, $370M, Nov 2024: KKR (lead). Valuation: $2.4B
Stated facts & numbers
- Lighthouse in Ghent is a Belgian unicorn valued at over $1 billion, specialized in hotel revenue management; it was founded after Matthias Geeroms and co-founders noticed empty London hotels during the 2012 Olympics. (0:27:05, Virtual 2025-07-02)
- Lighthouse (Ghent) is a Belgian unicorn valued at over a billion, born from observing half-empty London hotels during the 2012 Olympics. (0:27:27, Virtual 2025-07-02)