guest-messaging
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Hostaway made a business out of your vacation’s busywork
Behind the holiday photos sit calendars, cleaners and a small mountain of messages. Hostaway turned that administrative mess into a software business, survived a travel shutdown and is now betting on AI to handle more of the shift.
The Company Betting That a Text Beats a Survey
Founded in 2010 with the Mall of America as its first account, Kipsu turned front-desk texting into a real-time engagement engine now used by 1,600+ organizations in about 30 countries.
Akia
Akia wants to turn the hotel front desk into an invisible operating system - answering the midnight text, issuing the door code and selling the late checkout while the human staff handles the moments that actually need a human.
Evan Chen
Evan Chen is the founder and CEO of Akia, a San Francisco-based AI-powered guest experience platform built for hotels and vacation rentals. A former Solutions Engineering Manager at Meta, Chen pivoted from big tech to rethink how the hospitality industry communicates - replacing phone calls and paper forms with text-based AI that learns individual guest preferences. Under his leadership, Akia has raised $12.1M, counts Marriott, Hyatt, IHG, and The Ritz-Carlton among its clients, and is engineering what Chen calls 'the future of agentic hospitality.'