Amadeus, a global leader in travel technology, has announced a minority investment in hivr.ai through its strategic financing program Amadeus Ventures.
hivr.ai, an innovative scale-up launched in 2019, consolidates and automates meetings and groups sales across the fragmented distribution landscape, including hotel websites, email, phone, and third-party venue finders. The technology enables hotels to streamline processes, shorten sales cycles, and significantly increase meetings and groups revenue.
Meetings and groups account for more than a third of overnight stays worldwide. However, the sales process remains largely manual and resource-intensive, with hotels typically not sending proposals until 48-96 hours later. Due to slow response times, only 10-20% of meeting requests convert to confirmed business, while up to 70%
of meeting planners never receive a proposal. By leveraging hivr.ai’s AI-powered solutions, hotels can automate the manual workload and significantly speed up the bidding process for meetings and groups. This improves the meeting planner experience and hotels’ chances of converting business.
“Our innovative AI-powered solutions enable convention sales teams to transform their workflows. At a time when booking offices are understaffed, hivr.ai automates time-consuming, manual administrative tasks. This includes data entry, complex availability checks, and repetitive follow-up emails and calls through
our voice-enabled AI technology. Convention sales teams can now focus on what really matters – creating unique experiences for their meeting customers, instead of being burdened by low-value administrative tasks.” Felix Undeutsch, CEO of hivr.ai.
In addition to its investment, Amadeus is exploring commercial collaboration opportunities for the technology, bringing it to a customer base across hospitality. hivr.ai will develop an interface with Delphi, Amadeus’ industry-leading retail and hospitality solution, and will complement Amadeus’ MeetingBroker product. This integration will provide hoteliers with expanded channels, new connectivity options and
AI-powered automation capabilities.
“Through Amadeus Ventures, we closely monitor trends across the hospitality ecosystem, with a focus on the rapidly evolving AI space. hivr.ai provides hoteliers with a practical use for this developing technology, offering solutions that can be seamlessly integrated into existing operations. The investment fits with our broader mission to bring innovative solutions to our customers and improve their operational efficiency.” Suzanna Chiu, Head of Amadeus Ventures, Amadeus.
Founded in 2020 by four former Expedia executives, hivr.ai is headquartered in Germany and has team members in Germany, Switzerland, the UK and Romania. Terms of the transaction remain undisclosed.
Source: Amadeus.