The Venture Codex

Led · Seed · Feb 2015

Alice offers a hotel operations platform that centralizes communication, drives cost savings and supports revenue generation while simplifying guest service by connecting all points within a property. The product targets hotel operations teams and is used by major brands including Two Roads Hospitality, Dream Hotel Group, Grupo Posadas, SIXTY Hotels, NYLO Hotels and Leading Hotels of the World. Founded in 2013 and led by CEO Justin Effron, Alice has a longstanding commercial relationship with Expedia that began with an equity investment in 2015. In August 2017 Expedia made a further investment, becoming the company’s majority shareholder. The new funding will be used to build out Alice’s development, product, sales and customer success teams. The company has raised $39M in total funding following the latest round. Alice, led by co-founder Alex Shashou, provides a platform for hotels to receive, manage and execute guest and internal staff requests across all departments and offers a suite of mobile solutions for guest communications and staff mobility. The company serves customers including Gansevoort Hotel Group, The Setai Miami Beach, Viceroy and Dorint Hotels. Alice raised $9.5M in a Series A and intends to use the funds to continue building out its technology. The company plans to expand its team, hiring sales, engineering, product and account management roles. It will also continue to roll out ALICE lite, a lightweight model that lets hotels test the Guest Experience Management service at lower cost. Alice is a New York-based hospitality app that allows hotel guests to discover and request amenities and services from their digital devices. The platform pairs a guest-facing discovery and request interface with a back-end task-management and analytics system designed to increase property operational efficiency. The company announced a $3 million funding round led by Tishman Realty Principles and the Founders of NeueHouse. The announcement did not specify the financing instrument or list any additional participating investors. No prior rounds, founding year, revenue figures, or other operating metrics were disclosed in the report. The news was published as part of a funding roundup and linked to a press release.