Keeps CMS and Guðrún Hildur: shaping the future of Icelandic travel tech

Iceland is full of young entrepreneurs; many are dedicated to creating better ways for travel companies to connect with their customers. One of the leaders in this burgeoning field is travel industry veteran Guðrún Hildur Ragnarsdóttir. She is one of the founders of Keeps CMS. The team at Keeps CMS has made it a mission to solve the many challenges hotels and tour companies have in managing and publishing their images. This is an important issue; travelers often choose their hotels and tours based on the imagery shown on websites and apps. I wonder if I should not try Keeps CMS. I have a whopping four thousand images in my database! With Guðrún, there are other people on the Keeps CMS team: Nína Auðardóttir, Felix Wachira, Maneenuch Tangsamritkul, and Bruno Ceretto. Guðrún started her career in the travel industry when she joined Hertz in Copenhagen. She spent six years at Expedia, focusing on the travel markets of Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland; after that, she was a COO at Guide to Iceland.

Hey Guðrún, thank you for taking the time for this interview. Can you tell me how you simplify lives for hotels and tour companies?

Thanks for the invitation. Keeps CMS content management system is built to help hotels look good online and sell more through their content. It’s solving the constant headache of updating content on all the sales channels, which have multiplied in the last ten years. Hotels use about 6-8 channels on average, and this process is too time-consuming for a busy hotel manager. Lack of time means those channels don’t get updated, leading to bad, wrong, outdated photos and information that negatively impacts sales. I haven’t talked to one hotel manager who does not recognize this problem.

How Keeps CMS works

So, we created a system that stores photos and information and connects directly to sales channels such as booking.com, Expedia Tripadvisor, and hundreds of others. So now, the hotel manager only needs to log in to Keeps CMS and make any updates, such as adding the Northern Lights photo as a cover photo. Now, we even have a seasonality feature where, for example, winter photos become visible during the winter season, and then they are taken down automatically. Soon, the hotel manager can use his photo library in Keeps to post on social media.

Can you tell me where you are now with Keeps CMS?

We are close to a hundred hotels using Keeps CMS here in Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Kenya. Keeps CMS  have a wide range of hotels using Keeps. This ranges from prominent hotels such as Oddsson Hotel in Reykjavik, Stracta Hotel, Hotel Foroyar, and Glee Hotel Nairobi to smaller properties. These smaller propertie sinclude Lake Hotel in Egilsstaðir, Dís cottages, Mjóeyri and Hotel Skógafoss. We are onboarding new hotels almost daily now, and the team will continue to grow. And it’s probably a good time to tell you that we will soon be onboarding a luxury chain in Copenhagen in the next weeks. I will keep it a secret for now; which chain is it?

What is it like to be an entrepreneur here in Iceland? Are there any specific advantages or challenges for working out of Iceland?

The entrepreneurial environment in Iceland is very vibrant. It is filled with people who have started great companies, tried to start a great company, failed, and succeeded. It’s also full of people who want you to succeed, great mentors, investors, and incubators who are there for you in your journey and believe in you. The advantage is that Iceland is a great market to test your product; it’s relatively small. There is also a lot of talent in Iceland, from design to programming. There is this mentality that there is always somebody who knows somebody who can help.

The challenges of being an entrepreneur in Iceland

The challenges are the salaries and salary-related costs. For a young startup with limited resources, it’s hard to build a company in the beginning with resources in Iceland. Salaries are high, and hiring the wrong person can cost you. Iceland also lacks competitiveness when it comes to payment processors. For example, we  don’t have Stripe. Another incredibly challenging thing is that if you are solely dependent on investors, you will have to pay yourself salaries that at least cover the way of living in Iceland. Inflation is ridiculous, which is a persistent problem. We don’t have a government that knows how to handle the issue of inflation. Suppose you are paying a lot for your mortgage. A salary a startup might not cover this. This is perhaps too political, but that’s how things are here. This is hindering people from taking the full step in becoming entrepreneurs.

You work with many hotels. Do you have favorite hotels in Iceland that you want to recommend to my readers?

My favorite hotels of those that I have stayed at would have to be Sel – Hótel Mývatn in Mývatnssveit, Reykjavik Residence in Reykjavik, Hotel Skógafoss, and Stracta Hotel in the south of Iceland, and Mjóeyri in Eskifjörður.

What are your favorite places and activities here in Iceland?

I would say Westfjords, and Reykjanes in Reykjafjörður. There, you can bath in the biggest natural pool in Iceland. I also love Heydalur in Mjóifjörður. I also like spending time in Seyðisfjörður in the east of Iceland. Activities would have to be rafting with Bakkaflöt in the north of Iceland, four-wheel driving through the black beach in Þorlákshöfn with Black beach tours, horseback riding with Hekluhestar in the south of Iceland, and snowmobiling with Mountaineers of Iceland on the glacier.

What are your recommendations for travelers coming to Iceland for the first time?

Don’t try to do everything in one trip, unless it’s a long one, haha! Every part of Iceland has something to offer, something to see, enjoy and feel. Visit the countryside and stay more than one night at the hotel and drive around, experience things and eat the great food that the locals have to offer. Enjoy the small and big moments.