Aiello

Aiello Inc. is a Taiwan-based natural language processing and voice AI company serving the hospitality industry. Its flagship product, Aiello Voice Assistant (AVA), is an in-room AI concierge that answers guest questions, executes voice commands (room settings, music, local recommendations), handles service requests such as housekeeping and restaurant reservations, and pushes promotional broadcasts and digital signage to guests. AVA is positioned as a replacement for traditional in-room hardware and physical PBX systems, running over in-room power and Wi-Fi and integrating with major PMS, TMS, PABX, RCU and IoT platforms.

In 2023 the company launched Aiello-One, an all-in-one hospitality SaaS management platform structured around three modules — Interface, Operations and Insight — with a plugin system for incremental upgrades. The broader portfolio described by the company includes AVA, TMS pro, a Voice Translator, an AI voice collaboration platform and GuestWeb, covering guest engagement before, during and after the stay, alongside analytics dashboards that let hotel groups compare performance across properties. Earlier positioning described Aiello as a full-stack NLP SaaS platform with pre-trained voice and NLU models and an industry knowledge-graph database, deployed to customer-service and client-facing teams in finance, insurance and hospitality, with an emphasis on no-code configuration and model retraining.

The company was founded in January 2019 with a founding team drawn from Google, Qualcomm and HTC. Leadership includes CEO and co-founder Vic Shen (previously Google Senior Director of Intelligent Voice Assistant Solutions, with prior roles at Qualcomm and Broadcom), VP of Business Development and co-founder Uliya Liao (formerly Product Marketing Director at Qualcomm China, with prior roles at MediaTek and Atheros), VP of Engineering Morris Chou (formerly Qualcomm R&D) and Senior Director of Marketing Patty Chen (previously Appier).

Founding story

Aiello was founded in January 2019 by a team drawn from Google, Qualcomm and HTC, with Vic Shen — previously Google's Senior Director of Intelligent Voice Assistant Solutions and a veteran of Qualcomm and Broadcom — as CEO and co-founder, and Uliya Liao, formerly Product Marketing Director at Qualcomm China, as co-founder and VP of Business Development. The company set out to apply in-house natural language processing and machine learning models to conversational AI in Asia-Pacific.

Business model

Aiello sells a subscription SaaS platform and associated in-room hardware to hotels and hotel groups, including corporate-level contracts signed with hotel brands. The company positions its software-based approach as reducing hotel capital expenditure versus physical PBX systems and multiple in-room devices, and offers a modular platform with a plugin system so properties can add capabilities over time.

Software-as-a-service for hotel properties and chains, sold at property and corporate/group level, with in-room voice hardware and integrations to existing hotel systems; the platform also enables hotels to generate incremental revenue through upselling, in-room dining orders and, from Q3 2024, third-party travel itinerary and shopping services delivered in guest rooms.

Traction

Company-reported figures include deployment in more than 180 hotels covering over 20,000 rooms across nine countries since 2019, more than 14 million inquiries answered from 2.5 million end users, over 4.71 million guest requests and cross-departmental tasks processed, over 55.1 million voice and touch guest interactions, support for more than 2.8 million room nights, over 12 million voice enquiries, and 3x year-over-year growth. In 2023, 65% of new contracts came from global hotel chains. Earlier disclosures cited roughly 500,000 monthly voice and text interactions at the time of the Pre-A round, rising to more than 900,000 per month by 2022, with AVA-equipped rooms expected to grow 2.5x in 2022 versus 2021. Claimed customer outcomes include a roughly 30% reduction in front-desk workload, phone calls reduced by 66%, online review ratings up 10%, in-room dining orders up 33%, and up to 60% cost savings.

Latest developments

In October 2024 Aiello announced a US$5 million funding round led by Cool Japan Fund and CDIB Cross Border Innovation Fund II LP, with E.Sun Venture Capital, B Current Mstar Impact Investment and existing backers JAFCO Asia and Wistron participating; Kenichi Sawaya of CDIB Cross Border Innovation Fund II LP joined the board. Proceeds are earmarked for international expansion in Japan and Southeast Asia and for working with local software and service providers to localize the Aiello Hospitality Platform. Beginning in Q3 2024, Aiello partnered with service and content providers to deliver travel itineraries and shopping services in guest rooms, and it has announced a partnership with TableCheck for AI-driven restaurant reservations.