Hotel Startup Alice Raises $3 Million to Build Out Hospitality Mobile Tech

Hospitality startup Alice today announced a $3 million seed round led by Tishman Realty Principles, NeueHouse Founders, 645 Ventures, and the founders of Seamless. This is the startup’s first announced round of funding, but Skift reported on its partial $1.3 million raise in June.

The funding will be used to develop the mobile technology and expand its roster of participating hotels, which currently includes The Setai, The Gansevoort Group, Standard Hotels, and Sixty Hotel Group.

Alice, which gained popularity as a consumer-facing app, a kind of remote control that guests could use to access a hotel’s concierge, has since transitioned its focused to the back-end. It is developing a back-end system that allows staff to track requests from guests, whether they’re made in person, via app or a phone call.

The customizable white label software tracks when a task is received, assigned and completed and delivers top level analytics that show response time and number of completed tickets by employees and teams for specific periods of time.

There is also a concierge side of the software, called Local, with a database of local activities and businesses where concierge staff can take notes, make bookings and send guests confirmations and information via apps, emails or a phone call.

The app is currently working with hotels in the U.S., UK, and Australia. It will soon launch in Israel and is introducing language-specific software this March to expand its customer base in Europe. Alice currently works with several boutique and luxury players in the U.S. and will continue to focus its partner acquisitions on three to five star brands. 

"What we think is the game changer is the backend," says Alice investor Nnamdi Okike from 645 Ventures.

"That was more compelling. It's bigger in terms of customer purchasing and much more sticky over the long term. They’ve brought on a range of different hotels ad we view that as a good validation that this service is in high demand."