ALICE, which allows hotels to manage and complete guest requests across various service departments with ease thanks to its intuitive host of mobile suite products, announced today that it had closed a $9.5 million Series A funding round.
The round was led by Expedia with participation from Laconia, 645 Ventures, and Neuehouse founders as well. The company has raised $13 million to date.
These funds will enable the team at ALICE, which is actually an acronym that stands for “A Life-Improving Customer Experience,” to “continue to build out the technology and significantly expand the team hiring sales, engineering, product, and account management roles,” according to a release from the company.
“The team at ALICE is obsessed with every operational detail associated with running a hotel. Their software solves major hotelier operational pain points and it’s easy to see how they are able to save hoteliers money and manhours. ALICE puts the entire hotel operating system into the palm of a consumer’s hands through their own devices. I believe every hotel that engages with them will be ecstatic,” said John Kim, chief product officer, Brand Expedia Group at Expedia Inc., in a press release.
ALICE is working on a SaaS-based pricing model with most hotel partners paying between $500 – $1500 a month for access to the platform “depending on their operation and needs.” ALICE’s co-founder Alex Shashou noted that the company is offering a limited time promotion for hotels to try the service free for 30 days with an intro price of $250 monthly.
The benefits of the platform don’t solely fall on the management side, Shashou told TechCrunch:
“On the customer side, ALICE enables a hotel to have a mobile strategy with their guests; through native apps, SMS and even web, guests can discover and communicate with their hotels for any service. It places the hotel in the palm of their hand, allowing a guest to engage with a property on their own terms.”