Navis, a Bend hotel reservation, sales and information company, is in growth mode.

Last week, Navis acquired Arizona-based LMG Data Mining, a company that gives hotels and resorts information about guest purchasing habits based on the guests’ previous stays.

Like LMG, Navis specializes in gathering guest information and preferences, to help hotels and resorts tailor their marketing efforts based on the guests’ desired experience. The company also tracks hotels’ reservation productivity, based on reservation agents’ booking histories.

The difference is that Navis tracks information about what amenities guests would prefer and activities they would like to participate in before a hotel stay, while LMG uses spending information to track how the guests spent their time after the fact.

The acquisition nearly doubles Navis’ list of hotel clients — from about 200 to nearly 400, said Bill Schlosser, the company’s vice president of marketing.

And Navis plans to add about 35 employees over the next six months, bringing its workforce to more than 200.

Bringing pre- and post-stay information under Navis’ roof has long been a goal for the company, Navis CEO Kyle Buehner said. The deal, finalized Nov. 16, follows six months of negotiations with LMG, based out of Tempe.

Buehner declined to disclose financial terms of the deal. But he said taking on LMG’s similar-sized client list was a logical move.

“The LMG acquisition is a great choice for us,” Buehner said. “We both help clients in the hotel industry, but blending our databases together will give better visibility to our clients, and give hoteliers a more full view (of visitor habits) than previously.”

The acquisition means Navis now has offices in Bend and the Phoenix, Dallas and Orlando, Fla., metro areas. About two-thirds of Navis’ business is with clients in the southeast United States, Buehner said.

Among its clients are resorts like the PGA National Resort and Spa and The Breakers Palm Beach, both in Palm Beach, Fla.Local clients include Black Butte Ranch and Brasada Ranch.

Navis provides two services: Its RezForce vacation planning service operates as a call center, enabling hotels to book reservations outside their normal business hours. Navis purchases thousands of toll-free 800 numbers for clients. When someone dials one of those numbers, the call is automatically directed to a Navis call-center employee. The employees know which lodging establishment a call is coming in for, based on the 800 number that appears in their software.

The other service is Narrowcast, which gathers guest information to help hotels focus their services.

Employees who book reservations are trained to ask callers about what type of features they would like to experience during their stay. Those questions enable Narrowcast to gather the information, even if the guest ultimately doesn’t book a stay.

But this is the first time Navis has had access to pre- and post-stay data. The move positions Navis to keep adding clients and employees at its mostly virtual call center. In reality, many call-center employees work from their homes.

Navis has quadrupled its workforce over the last seven years, going from about 40 employees in 2005 to 165 today.

The company is already bringing in prospective employees for call-center training, Schlosser said, and interested locals are encouraged to apply. Navis’ main office is on Southwest Scalehouse Court, just east of Bend’s Old Mill District.

Navis was founded in Sunriver in 1987, under the name Buehner-Fry Inc. Kyle’s father, Milton Buehner, was a co-founder. The company started out providing phone services that charge room occupants for long-distance calls instead of the property owners, according to The Bulletin’s archives.

But calling cards and cellphones made that a less attractive service, so the company switched its focus to marketing software.

The acquisition of LMG puts Navis in a position where it can keep adding workers and potentially add building space, as it looks to continue expanding services down the road, Buehner said.

“In 25 years, we’ve never really had an acquisition, so it’s significant in that aspect,” he said. “This is the direction we want to go, and we believe there’s a lot of potential to grow with the data we now have available.”