Expedia Leads $26 Million Alice Investment in Hotel Tech Push
Skift Take
Alice is now majority-owned by Expedia. That brings heft to its dream of becoming the largest data machine in hospitality for operations and guest service.
Alice, a startup that sells operations software to hotels, has raised $26 million in a Series B funding round led by online travel giant Expedia.
The move makes Expedia a majority shareholder. But New York-based Alice will remain an independent brand and will not change its day-to-day operations, the companies say.
The round brings Alice's total funding to $39 million.
Alice, one of Skift's Top Travel Startups to Watch in 2017, began life in 2013 as guest-facing concierge messaging app named after the housekeeper on the 1970s TV show The Brady Bunch. It has since evolved into software that aims to provide the first unified platform for a hotel to run its entire back-end operations, such as housekeeping and customer service communication.
While the company has talked this game for a few years, what's changed in the past 18 months is that it has finally executed on the vision, said chief executive and co-founder Justin Effron. The company "is now at a completely different level," when it comes to putting into place a set of tools that are broad and comprehensive and that are responsive to what hotels have said their needs are, he
