A coveted dinner reservation often begins with a text to a hotel concierge, a well-connected friend, or someone who knows the restaurant manager. Those personal referrals have long helped venues fill tables, yet the person making the connection rarely received more than a thank-you.
Miami-based PRIMA wants to change that. The hospitality booking platform has raised a $5 million seed round to expand its performance-based referral network into more cities.
Launched in 2024 by serial entrepreneur Alex Zhardanovsky, PRIMA connects restaurants and other hospitality businesses with concierges and people whose recommendations drive spending. Diners can gain access to sought-after reservations, including on short notice, while venues can fill open inventory and reduce revenue lost to empty tables.
“Think about how many times you recommended a restaurant to somebody over the past five or ten years. Now imagine everyone paid you $15 or $20 for that recommendation. How much money did you leave on the table?” Zhardanovsky shared in PRIMA’s funding announcement.
His argument is that hospitality marketing has often failed to reward the people who produce clear results.
“Venues have always paid for ads that don’t work and comped experiences to people who don’t drive business,” Zhardanovsky asserted. “Meanwhile, the concierge or connector who sends them real guests month after month gets a thank-you at best. That’s the gap PRIMA was built to close.”
The company also marked Zhardanovsky’s return to an idea from earlier in his career. In 2000, after the dot-com crash, he co-founded AzoogleAds with Joe Speiser. The performance-based advertising network grew to more than $200 million in annual sales.
AzoogleAds paid publishers when users took an action instead of paying for views or clicks. PRIMA applies a similar model to offline recommendations.
“PRIMA does the same thing, but for real world recommendations. Recommend a restaurant to your friend? You get paid for it. Spa? Same thing. Hotel? That too,” Zhardanovsky wrote on LinkedIn.
What better place to launch this than Miami? In a city where dinner turns into drinks, drinks turn into dancing, and one well-placed text can set the whole night in motion, access is its own currency. The hottest reservation often goes to the guest whose concierge, host, or impossibly connected friend knows exactly whom to call.
PRIMA is already active in Miami, New York, Ibiza, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Barcelona. The company said Chicago and Madrid are among its next planned markets. The funding will support new venue partnerships and growth in its concierge network.
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