London startup Pace has raised £2.5m to help hotels boost revenues using artificial intelligence

A London startup using artificial intelligence to help boost revenues for hotels has raised several million pounds of cash from early-stage investors.

Seedcamp, SpeedInvest and Amadeus Capital Partners are among investors putting £2.5m into Pace, with InterGlobe – the company behind India’s larges airline IndiGo – leading the seed round.

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Pace, founded in 2016, uses machine learning to try and solve the problem of fluctuations in seasonal demand for hotels which is estimated to collectively cost them billions of pounds each year. It produces automated dynamic pricing for rooms, coming up with the right price at the right the time.

“Static and inefficient pricing has held hotels back for too long,” said chief executive and co-founder Jens Munch.

“Drawing on research from finance and aerospace, we want to raise the bar for revenue management and help hotels sell every room at the optimum price. We’re excited to announce this investment, which lets us expand our science and engineering team and give hotels the solution they deserve.”

Pace will initially target independent and boutique hotels and is already being beta tested by 20 retreats in five countries, increasing revenues by 10 per cent on average.

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“Waste in any industry is a bad thing, particularly in the travel industry where it involves many services that are interdependent and where customers end up footing the bill for poorly optimised travel and hospitality options,” said Seedcamp managing director Carlos Espinal.

“By backing Pace, we hope that the industry will have a new tool to take a step in the right direction and reduce the friction of over/underbooking and the negative impact it has to us all.”