Livebookings, the European-based restaurant reservation service, has announced three new recruits to its executive team, including ex-Google New Business Development Principal for EMEA, Robert Swerling, who becomes Chief Commercial Officer.
The other two new recruits are Sue Ball, ex-Unibet Group, who joins as CFO; and Andris Berzins, who joins from AeroScout as Chief Marketing Officer.
Swerling will be charged with leading Livebookings’ “aggressive push into new and existing markets”, with the company already claiming revenue growth of 300% in 2009, although that’s pretty meaningless without the numbers.
What’s more clear, however, is that there’s plenty of room for growth in the online restaurant booking space, with only 7% of restaurants worldwide take bookings online, says the company.
And Livebookings certainly looks like it has the funds to take advantage of that opportunity. In September 09 it secured $16 million in a new funding round from Germany/Pan-European VC firm Wellington Partners, following a previous round of of $12 million from Balderton Capital and other investors over 2008 and 2009.
High profile restaurants using the service include Petrus in London, Aquavit in New York, Blue Elephant in Paris, East in Hamburg, and Grill in Stockholm – and Livebookings also operates a network of 500 booking partners, such as American Express, Yell.com, Qype, Bookatable.com and lastminute.com.