Over half of hoteliers are planning to increase technology spending this year on innovations that increase loyalty and personalize the end-to-end travel experience. This is one of the reasons why Carlsbad, California-based business-to-customer messaging solution Zingle has raised $11 million in funding led by PeakSpan Capital. With this funding round, Zingle is going to further build out solutions, grow their team, and push further into hospitality.
Zingle taps into artificial intelligence and human engagement to provide the type of white-glove service and guest experience that travelers demand. And Zingle’s platform offers the ability to analyze message intent, understand the guest need, reply with an automatic response, suggest a response for hotel staff to executive, or trigger an activity such as creating a service ticket.
“Today’s consumers expect the brands they do business with to provide memorable experiences and top notch customer service,” said Ford Blakely, CEO & Founder of Zingle.“These preferences ring especially true in the hospitality space where travelers have a wide array of services to choose from. Zingle’s platform gives hospitality brands the ability to provide exemplary service and deliver personalized experiences.”
Recently, Zingle acquired Philadelphia-based Presto AI to further evolve its platform. Now Zingle is able to analyze and learn from millions of monthly messages exchanged between guests and hotels. And the solution can categorize over 150 different intents, which makes responses smarter and more personalized. Plus the message data is stored in Zingle’s analytics and can be used to inform data-driven decisions such as using message volume trends to make smarter staffing decisions.
Through the Zingle platform, leading hotels and resorts like Hyatt, Broadmoor, and Great Wolf exchanged over 120 million messages with guests. Zingle also added several talented individuals to their executive leadership team such as SVP of Marketing Jason Hekl (formerly of SiriusDecisions and Coupa Software), SVP of Sales Ellis Connolly (formerly of TrustYou and Cvent), and SVP of Product Eric Pannese (formerly of NuORDER and Intuit).
“In the last five years, travel companies have raised more than $1 billion in venture capital funding,” said Matt Melymuka, Co-Founder and Partner, PeakSpan Capital. “The majority of these companies are in the business of creating experiences. As more traditional players in the hospitality space look to augment their offerings to compete with this new wave of companies, Zingle provides a simple, yet highly effective way for properties to engage with guests in a more personalized way, thus, transforming an ordinary stay into a memorable one.”
