The focus on the hospitality sector has already ensured that HiJiffy will apply its technology to Portuguese clients such as Pestana, Villa Gil that it Nau Hotels and Startup Solutions is already in use in more than 50 countries. Now it has secured an investment of €3.8 million that will allow it to increase staff and launch new products aimed at revolutionizing the way hotels interact with their guests.
The goal is to become a European leader and expansion to German markets is already planned, namely Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
“With Portugal, Spain, France and the UK as our main markets, we currently have over 1,800 hotels in more than 50 countries, Our revenues are mostly from international clients.And explains Tiago Araujo, CEO of HiJiffy, quoted in a statement. The founder and CEO of the company highlights the importance of aggressively entering the German, Swiss and Austrian markets to confirm HiJiffy as the largest European provider of conversational AI for hotels.
at the end of last year HiJiffy has launched the first hospitality voice assistant capable of handling complex voice communication in a multilingual environmentThe show uses complete sentences and instant voice responses that reproduce a very close human interaction. Already this year, in March, HiJiffy launched its first hotel chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology, making use of generative AI. To manage guest inquiries and requests with greater accuracy and automation.
Strengthening the team with more than 20 employees
The secured investment will now allow HiJiffy to grow its team from around 30 to over 50 employees. The company intends to proceed with hiring 20 professionals by the end of the year with vacancies already in product, sales and marketing, customer support and human resources.
The startup currently has employees from ten different nationalities, promoting tele-orientation first. Founded in Vidigueira, in Beja, will open new offices there and plans to open a location in Lisbon, in Heden Sta. Apollonia.
Attracting private investment and European money is key to the new ambitions. The new round of investment has led Caixa Capital, which also joined Lince Capital, as well as Portugal Ventures, which had already invested in HiJiffy in 2020. The company, to 2.5 million euros invested by venture capital firms, €1.3 million granted by the European Commission through the Recovery and Resilience Plan, support that comes within the framework of the Tourism Acceleration and Transformation Agenda, a project of more than 30 leading companies in the tourism sector in Portugal .
More efficiency in hospitality But AI does not replace jobs
a The hotel sector suffers from a shortage of human resources, and the figures mentioned by the company indicate that there are thousands of vacancies to be filled.. Which means AI technology could play a more relevant role in automating some tasks.
“It is important to point out that we do not intend to eliminate the human component, but rather to direct it towards activities that really generate added value,” says Tiago Araujo.
HiJiffy’s solution covers pre-stay and stay periods and automates repetitive tasks with low added value, reducing operating costs and addressing staff shortages. Prompt response to guest questions in more than 130 languages and on various communication channels is one element, as is optimization of reservations.
During the stay, the solution facilitates the digitization of processes such as check-in or check-out, providing instant answers about the operation of the hotel and reservation services.
“Writer. Analyst. Avid travel maven. Devoted twitter guru. Unapologetic pop culture expert. General zombie enthusiast.”
