Smartpricing has raised $14 million to enhance its apartment and hotel sector revenue management software.
The Italian company makes software designed to help hosts boost their revenue via machine learning models. The funding round came from a mix of equity and bank credit lines, EU Startups reported Thursday (Dec. 14).
The round, which comes at a “challenging investment climate,” Smartpricing CEO and Co-founder Luca Rodella said in the report, “was one of our region’s largest.”
Smartpricing, which operates in 17 countries, uses artificial intelligence-powered technology to streamline daily operations for hotels, bed and breakfasts, resorts and vacation rentals. Rodella said the company will use the funding for an expansion of its staff and to launch new products, per the report.
The funding comes at a time when the travel sector is embracing AI because travelers are embracing AI.
As PYMNTS wrote last month, “consumers show keen interest in AI involvement in their traveling, as evidenced by the increase in digital travel-planning tools helping to craft personalized travel itineraries and generative AI chatbots assisting in flight bookings in several languages, which all create smoother and more personalized experiences for travelers.”
Research by PYMNTS Intelligence found that 63% of consumers have at least a slight interest in AI-enabled travel, just below the 66% and 65%, respectively, who showed the same level of interest in AI-powered entertainment and communication and shopping.
This interest has caused travel-sector companies to up their investments in AI. Airbnb, for example, bought startup GamePlanner.AI for $200 million, and European hospitality provider Accor launched an AI-powered travel assistant, created in partnership with Amazon Web Services.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has spoken of AI’s potential to advance customer service, helping to mediate complex issues involving guests and hosts from different corners of the world.
“Imagine you have a Japanese hosting a German guest and there’s a problem, and you have these two people speaking different languages calling customer service,” Chesky said during an earnings call last month. “There’s a myriad of issues. There’s no front desk. We can’t go on-premise. We don’t understand the inventory and we need to try to adjudicate an issue based on 70 different policies that can be up to 100 pages long.”
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