You are finding November days dark and damp and dream of a trip to a cosy place with a touch of vintage, where the food is great and you can easily enjoy beautiful views and take some nice photos… There are of course millions of hotels that can easily be booked over the internet, but how can you find the one that really corresponds to what you are looking for?
Well aware that leisure industry clients today are looking for experiences rather than products, the founders of Travelsify came up with the idea of a search engine with criteria based on travellers’ moods and wishes. The result is the world’s first Travel & Lifestyle DNA platform. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing, the company has to date analysed over 400 million traveller and expert reviews of hotels and restaurants and developed search criteria such as “spacious”, “stylish”, “lively”, “design”, “luxury” or “nightlife”. Relevancy percentages make it easy for users to compare different hotels and restaurants with one another. “Our mission is to help the hospitability and travel industry close the gap between guest expectations and reality thanks to AI analytics,” says CEO Bruno Chauvat.
Our mission is to help the hospitability and travel industry close the gap between guest expectations and reality thanks to AI analytics.
Targeting professionals
The main modules of Travelsify’s AI-driven database, Hotel DNATM, Restaurant DNATM and Vacation RentalTM, include data from more than 1 million travel products across the world. The company offers this data to hotel groups, hotel investors, online booking platforms, technology providers and targeted advertising platforms. “We also help hotel groups manage brand equity thanks to leading indicators pinpointing brand advocates or detractors amongst their hotels,” says Mr Chauvat.
AccorHotels.com has used Travelsify’s products to set up an inspirational search engine that allows users to look for hotels based on their mood and preferred experience, without pre-selecting a specific destination. English- and French-speaking clients can be guided to relevant hotels by choosing from a set of criteria broken down into four categories: “in the mood for…”, “preferred style”, “close to” and “anything else?”.
Successful fundraising
Travelsify was founded in Luxembourg in 2016 and benefits greatly from the multicultural and multilingual work environment that is very useful for a company whose activities and markets are, by nature, international. The company has from early on collaborated with Luxinnovation, the national innovation agency, and received support with the finalisation of its business plan and first financing round. Luxinnovation also helped Travelsify to successfully apply to the Ministry of the Economy for a grant for process and organisational innovation.
At the end of September 2018, the company announced that it had closed €5 million in a new funding round, led by AccorHotels and with participation from existing investors. In total, the young start-up has raised over €8 million to continue developing its products. For AccorHotels, the collaboration is highly beneficial. “Having access to data, not only guest preferences, but enriched product data with hotel experience descriptors reflecting the guest nuances are key enablers for our strategy,” comments Ian Di Tullio, SVP Guest Services at AccorHotels. “Travelsify has developed a unique AI technology to connect hotels, restaurants and vacation rentals with the guest taste on a much deeper level than before. The number of AccorHotels that could benefit from Travelsify Product DNA data is countless.”