Expedia Invests in Hotel Guest-Experience Platform Alice

Seeking to get deeper into hotel technology like Booking.com and TripAdvisor, Expedia Inc. made a minority investment in Alice, which provides a back-end platform for hotel operations and a guest app for communications with hotel staff.

Alexander Shashou, co-founder and president of New York-based Alice, wouldn't provide details on the Expedia minority investment but said the partnership means Expedia will market the Alice platform to hotel partners.

Alice offers a software-as-a-service platform to hotels that enables multiple departments within a hotel to respond to guest requests and provides reporting and analytics. In addition, an Alice app enables guests to communicate with front-of-the-house staff, who handle customer service requests.

The three-year-old travel startup had previously raised $3.5 million in funding from angel investors.

Alice and Expedia announced their ties at an Expedia partner conference in Las Vegas December 9. Timed for the event, Alice released an Alice Lite module, which enables hoteliers to white-label the Alice app for guests without having to use the back-of-the house functionality.