The “in-home” massage-on-demand service, Zeel, is expanding its service beyond New York to more parts of the US, including South Florida, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

The online booking service, which pairs trained massage therapists with consumers, launched in April 2013 and in Q4 of that year it raised US$1.7m in a second round of seed funding – with participation from investors including Lightbank, Corigin Ventures and Prolog Ventures, in addition to the angel investors who had previously backed the firm.

“We believe that we can be all over the world in 200-plus cities and this is a billion dollar plus revenue opportunity,” CEO of Zeel, Samer Hamadeh told Techcrunch.com. An additional round of investment will be sought in the first or second quarter of 2015.

Zeel has 420 therapists in New York, providing massage in people’s homes. Therapists who trialled in the new locations amount to 170 in South Florida, 150 in Los Angeles and almost 150 again in the Bay Area.

The logistics of scheduling appointments, the safety of therapists and compensation have been thought through by Zeel, which provides a vetting system for both therapists and customers. Therapists must be certified and customers each have their identity verified using the last four digits of their social security code.

Therapists can make up to 75 per cent more in terms of income than they would at a spa by using the site, according to Hamadeh. A 60-minute massage in Manhattan ranges from US$141 to US$159 and in the South Florida Bay Area from US$117 to US$130.

Using the company’s app to book services provides the firm with interesting data about preferences and consumer habits. Massage became the main business when it proved to be the most popular service sought by consumers when the company initially started as a booking platform for alternative health remedies. “We ended up booking 15,000 massages and massage was over half the bookings,” said Hamadeh.

Massages were being booked as impulse buys: “If massages were booked two or more days out there would be cancellation rates of 28 per cent,” said Hamadeh. “And 55 per cent of requests were for within four hours. The [traditional spa] industry isn’t set up to offer massages within four hours.”

Bringing massage to customers means consumer behaviour is different: “Roughly 72 per cent of the company’s orders come in after 5pm in the afternoon. Around 26 per cent of those [massages] are actually happening between 9 and 10:30pm,” Hamadeh continued.

This service offers an alternative to a trip to a spa – in direct contrast to the booming spa franchise business model that is so popular in the US. For example, spa companies with growing franchise businesses include Massage Envy, Planet Beach, Hand & Stone and Massage Green Spa.