Expedia Leads $9.5 Million Investment in Hotel Platform Alice

Skift Take
Alice is Expedia's latest foray into hotel technology as it previously signed a deal with Checkmate. Investing in these platforms can help create better guest experiences at Expedia's partner hotels, which in turn makes for a closer business relationship between Expedia and hotels.
Expedia has led a $9.5 million minority investment in Alice, which provides a back-end platform for hotel operations and a guest app for communications with hotel staff, as Expedia continues to follow Booking.com and TripAdvisor into the business side of the hotel industry.
Alice and Expedia announced their ties at the Expedia partner conference in Las Vegas on December 9 but didn't provide much detail on the investment or partnership until today, though the exact amount Expedia contributed to the round remains undisclosed. This latest round pegs Alice's total funding at about $13 million since it was founded in 2012, with 645 Ventures and Laconia Ventures also participating in this round.
Alice offers a software-as-a-service platform to hotels that enables multiple