Flowtel

What do they actually do

Flowtel runs an AI voice and chat service for hotels that answers guest calls and web chats and completes routine requests without a human on the line. Typical tasks include room bookings, sending amenities, making restaurant/spa reservations, valet requests, and basic concierge questions. When the agent can’t complete something, it routes to staff. Flowtel advertises 24/7, multilingual handling and an average go‑live time of 5 days for new properties Flowtel website.

The system connects into a hotel’s phones (VOIP/PBX) and booking/operations stack so it can check availability, place reservations, and trigger staff workflows. Public materials list integrations across common PMS/CRS and telephony providers (e.g., Oracle Opera, Cloudbeds, Amadeus, Sabre, 3CX, Cisco) and table/spa tools (e.g., OpenTable, Book4Time) Flowtel website – Integrations. Flowtel highlights early metrics like a 4.7/5 rating, “$63K/100 rooms recovered,” and the 5‑day go‑live claim, and notes it has “just launched” with first customers and seed funding while hiring founding engineers [Flowtel site; YC job post](https://flowtel.ai/, https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flowtel/jobs/4Tr9m7H-founding-engineer).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Independent hotel owners and general managers: Can’t reliably staff phones 24/7, leading to missed bookings and poor late‑night service. Limited IT bandwidth means new tools must work with existing VOIP/PMS without heavy setup.
• Regional or mid‑size chains (directors of operations/regional managers): Inconsistent call handling and staffing costs across properties. Need standardized handling of bookings and routine requests without adding headcount at every site.
• Large hotel groups / corporate contact centers (head of guest experience or contact center ops): High call volumes cause long waits and expensive human‑run centers. Integrating new tools into complex systems is risky; they need reliability, compliance, and centralized visibility.
• Front desk, reservations, and concierge staff: Constant interruptions from routine requests and manual entry cause errors and reduce time for higher‑value upsells and in‑person guest issues.
• F&B, spa, and revenue managers: Inconsistent capture of reservations and upsells on calls/chats leads to lost incremental revenue; reporting is fragmented or missing.

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Founders run white‑glove pilots with independents, offering short discounted trials and hands‑on integration/training to hit a fast go‑live; collect before/after metrics and testimonials for case studies Flowtel integrations & go‑live.
• First 50: Use the first case studies to sell to regional owners and small chains via targeted outbound by a hospitality AE plus co‑sell/referral motions with management companies and key PMS/VOIP vendors. Standardize an implementation playbook (per‑stack templates, checklists, pilot/pricing offers) to reduce founder time [Flowtel site; YC hiring signals](https://flowtel.ai/, https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flowtel/jobs/4Tr9m7H-founding-engineer).
• First 100: Launch channel/reseller programs with hotel management groups, contact‑center integrators, and PMS marketplaces for volume deals; productize onboarding (self‑serve connectors and operator dashboard) and anchor sales with ROI proof (e.g., recovered‑revenue figures) Flowtel metrics & integrations.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Hotels are a large, recurring‑revenue industry with substantial service overhead. In the U.S. alone there are 64,000+ lodging properties and 5.3 million rooms AHLA. Globally, hotel bookings are a multi‑hundred‑billion‑dollar market (projected US$455B in 2025) Statista.

Bottom-up calculation:

US‑only illustration: assume 35,000 properties (midscale/select‑service and above, 50+ rooms) are addressable for AI call/chat automation, paying an average of $800/property/month. TAM ≈ 35,000 × $800 × 12 ≈ $336M/year.

Assumptions:

• Focus on U.S. midscale+ hotels with 50+ rooms (estimate: ~35k of 64k+ total properties) AHLA.
• Average contract value of ~$800/property/month for AI voice+chat with core integrations and support.
• Excludes telephony minutes overage and enterprise roll‑up discounts; global expansion would increase TAM beyond this U.S. illustration.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• PolyAI: Conversational voice agents used across hospitality to handle reservations, housekeeping requests, routing, and FAQs; positions on handling 50%+ of calls and scaling across hundreds of sites with 24/7 coverage PolyAI hotels.
• Travel Outlook (Annette): A hotel‑focused virtual phone agent that answers and routes guest calls; claims to handle a large share of front‑desk calls and integrates with systems like ALICE and OpenTable, powered by PolyAI Annette.
• Asksuite: Omnichannel AI booking assistant and contact center platform for hotels across webchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, email, etc., with PMS/booking engine integrations and multi‑property tools Asksuite.
• HiJiffy: AI hotel chatbot and messaging platform to drive direct bookings and automate FAQs across website and social/IM channels; integrates with booking channels and PMS HiJiffy.
• Quicktext (Velma): AI virtual assistant and data platform for hotels (Velma) focused on guest messaging, lead capture, and direct booking across channels; widely used by international hotel groups Quicktext.