Zingle optimizes its solution for hoteliers with $11 M and a new acquisition

Job messaging platform buys Presto AI 

The coming year looks to be a time for change for the hotel industry, which hoteliers turning towards increasing technology and innovations to increase loyalty and personalize the end-to-end travel experience. Zingle, a leading business-to-customer messaging system, has recently announced that it has raised funding ($11 million) to aide in this trend. Led by PeakSpan Capital, the capital will be used to optimize Zingle's team and its technology to continue its push into the hospitality sector.

Zingle's messaging solution is different than chat bots. Whereas chat bots rely on keywords and scripts, Zingle's business-to-customer messaging system offers a combination of AI and actual human engagement to provide a more high-end service and a better customer experience. 

“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.”

Zingle is able to understand specific needs that guests might come with and reply with an automated response, thanks to its analyzing messaging "intent." Zingle can also suggest a response from hotel staff or start a service ticket or streamline the operations.

Thanks to its recent acquisition of Presto AI, a hospitality-based, computational linguistics and data science team, Zingle has optimized its platform significantly. Now, Zingle's messaging solution analyzes and learns from a database of millions of monthly messages and exchanges between quests and hotels. It categorizes over 150 different intents and creates smart responses that are more personalized than the average chat bot. Zingle stores the message data in its analytics that can be used to inform data-enabled decisions, like using message volume trends to make smarter staffing decisions.

“Through the acquisition of the Presto AI team, the Zingle platform has taken a significant step forward,” continued Blakely. “Zingle is now uniquely positioned to provide hotels an AI-equipped solution that meets growing consumer demand for both digital engagement and automated onsite convenience while improving guest engagement intelligence from booking to check-out.”

“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.”

Recently, Zingle has brought on new execs for its leadership team: Jason Heki, SVP of Marketing comes from SiriusDecisions and Coupa Software; Ellis Connolly, SVP of Sales and a former employee of TrustYou and Cvent; and Eric Pannese, SVP of Product, formerly from NuORDER and Intuit. 

These hires all bring a unique leadership experiences from their other venture-backed SaaS companies.

Hotel chains such as Hyatt, Broadmoor, and Great Wolf have all used Zingle, exchanging over 120 million messages with guests to date.

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