Voyat Raises $1.8 Million in Funding to Turn Guest Loyalty Into Revenue

Voyat, a startup that leverages guest data to increase loyalty and revenue, announced it attracted $1.8 million in seed funding led by Metamorphic Ventures, Eniac Ventures, BoxGroup, and several angel investors.

Voyat’s V-CRM product learns about guests by collecting social data from guests who sign into the hotel’s Wi-Fi using a social profile. The product creates a profile for each guest and uses an algorithm to identify guest attributes, interests, demographics, and loyalty.

Its second product provides hotels with a platform to act on that data by sending guests targeted emails, engaging them on social media, and timing promotions to increase the likelihood to buy.

“The Voyat platform serves to replace outdated practices with regards to guest loyalty, direct bookings bookings and CRM data collection,” explains Voyat co-founder and CEO Benjamin Habbel.

“By giving every hotel easy access to contextual discovery and machine learning technology, we are streamlining and modernizing a vital component of the industry through the cloud.”

Voyat has partnerships signed with Morgans Hotel Group, The New York Palace, and W Hotels at the time of launch.

The product could raise privacy concerns, but Morgans Hotel Group CTO Gustaf Burman likens it to the common practice of collecting email address from guests.

"Most, if not all, hotels do a good job of providing a digital experience during research and the booking," explains Burman. "We're hoping to bridge that experience between booking a Morgans hotel to arriving in the hotel so we can stay engaged with guests. We're hoping for CRM on steroids with Voyat."