Expedia pumps in another $26M in hospitality platform Alice

Alice, a New York-based hospitality tech startup, has secured $26 million in Series B funding from online travel company Expedia. The startup aims to use the funds further the mission of delivering the very best technology and customer service in the industry. This round brings Alice’s total funding to $39 million. In January 2016, Alice had received $9.5 million in Series A funding led by Expedia. The latest round makes Expedia a majority shareholder in Alice and deepens the commercial cooperation between the two companies that was originally established with an equity investment in 2015.

“Our mission is to give hoteliers the ability to provide the best guest service and experience they can around the clock, and this latest round is a testament to the hard work of everyone involved. With this additional capital, we’ll be better equipped to help hoteliers reach their goals of improved guest service,” said Justin Effron, Chief Executive Officer, Alice.

Alice focuses on enhancing digital consumer experiences by refining the guest experience head-on, and by studying not only how the internal business of a hotel runs, but also how services are delivered today in other analogous industries. This funding allows the startup to build out its development, product, sales, and customer success teams to help the company to reach its goal of being one of the hotel industry’s leading operating platforms. “It is time for the internet to expand beyond revolutionizing how our hotel partners market and distribute their products into how they service and interact with their guests,” says Cyril Ranque, President, Lodging Partner Services, Expedia.

“Alice is developing smart mobile and cloud technology to fundamentally improve the hotelier and guest experience at scale. That’s a revolution worth investing in,” Ranque added.

Earlier this year, ALICE launched products including the Guest Profile, which gives hoteliers a view into the guest experience across every aspect of their hotel stay, including check-in, requests for amenities and services, and any interaction with the concierge. This includes Guest Text Messaging, which facilitates text messaging between hotels and guests without requiring an app download, as well as Logbooks, which can be used by hoteliers to track any physical item belonging to or loaned to a guest, including packages and lost & found. Additionally, the company launched a Preventative Maintenance tool and an open-API, and is looking forward to releasing new features for use by hoteliers such as Checklists, a tool to improve task management, SMS automation, which automates responses via text to common guest questions, and more.