Former La Quinta Top Boss Bets on Contactless Tech Startup Virdee
Photo Credit: Male receptionist wearing a medical mask and rubber gloves while being at work and looking at the visitors with a phone in his hand. Adobe.
Skift Take
Contactless tech is buzzy as a form of pandemic harm reduction. But hotel companies will only front money for digital tools if the tech will steeply slice their costs long-term.
Rajiv Trivedi never thought in his two-decade career as a hotel executive that he'd someday take a stake in a contactless tech startup. But the former president of La Quinta Hotels said Tuesday that he has invested in Virdee.
Trivedi's investment firm TST Capital has helped the Austin-based startup Virdee close a $2 million seed round, Skift has learned. The amount of money is less impressive than the underlying business trend, which aims to suture the sector's wounds. As Skift CEO Rafat Ali recently put it, "Hotel check-ins are a vestige of the past."
Automating or replacing check-in has been promised for years. Yet a majority of stays at hotels worldwide continue today require a check-in with a front desk clerk.
A few hurdles remain. One key sticking point has been payment verification to prevent fraud. Another has been an inability to accept all forms of payment. A third has been obstacles to integrating with the core property management systems [PMS] hotel companies use. a
