Startup Stage: Chaty wants to help tour and activity operators manage inbound calls

Chaty

Chaty is an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered receptionist that integrates with booking systems to help tour operators handle inbound calls.

Founded in 2024, the Australia-based startup can answer questions, check availability and take bookings.

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

Tour, activity and experience operators miss up to 40% of inbound calls. When staff are running tours, serving guests or working after hours, those calls go unanswered, and most of those callers are ready to book.

Chaty is an AI receptionist that answers phone calls and website inquiries 24/7, checks live availability directly from the operator's booking system and guides customers from question to confirmed booking, without staff involvement.

What separates Chaty from generic AI chatbots is the booking system integration. We connect directly with FareHarbor, Rezdy, Roller and Bókun, so customers get a real answer in real time rather than a message and a callback that may never come. The result: fewer missed inquiries, more conversions and a front line that never switches off.

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup. 

Business

Chaty operates on a usage-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Operators pay a monthly subscription scaled to call volume and chatbot usage, starting at $29/month for lighter users and reaching $379/month for high-volume operations. The website chatbot is currently included at no extra cost.

Pricing is designed to flex with the industry's seasonality. Operators can scale down during quieter months rather than paying a fixed annual fee, which meaningfully reduces churn in a sector that runs in peaks and troughs.

Technology

The platform combines speech recognition, natural language processing, text-to-speech, telephony infrastructure and API integrations with booking systems. Chaty understands customer intent, queries live availability from connected reservation platforms, responds naturally in conversation and transfers complex calls to staff when needed.

After each interaction, Chaty can send an automated SMS follow-up (booking link, form, directions or map pin drop), closing the loop without human involvement. Each operator configures their own knowledge base, escalation rules, SMS content and booking workflows, so the product adapts to the specifics of each business rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all approach.

Give us your SWOT ((Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

Strengths

The booking system integration is our core moat. Chaty doesn't take a message; it retrieves live availability and guides customers to action. That's a meaningful technical and commercial difference from generic AI chatbots.

The founding team also brings directly relevant experience. James co-founded iVvy, a global venue booking SaaS, and runs Wildflower Gin, a Gold Coast gin distillery and tourism experience, where he encountered the problem Chaty now solves firsthand. We didn't spot this market on a spreadsheet; we lived it.

Weaknesses

We are early stage, and AI voice technology still requires education. Some operators need reassurance before allowing AI to handle front-line calls, which extends the sales cycle. The platform also depends on the reliability of third-party integrations and AI infrastructure, which creates ongoing technical complexity. And while flexible pricing mitigates it, tourism seasonality still affects revenue patterns across the year.

Opportunities

Operators are under mounting pressure to respond faster without adding headcount. AI adoption is accelerating and businesses are increasingly open to tools that solve specific, visible operational problems rather than broad AI promises. As the industry consolidates around a smaller number of trusted booking platforms, being embedded in those ecosystems early creates a durable distribution advantage.

Threats

The AI landscape is moving quickly. New models, voice tools and competitors are emerging constantly. The most credible strategic threat is that large booking platforms build similar functionality natively. Our defense is vertical focus, deep integrations and trusted partner relationships established before that becomes a reality.

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspectives?

For travelers

Before committing to a booking, customers often have specific questions: Is this date available? What's included? Is the location accessible? Can I book a private group? If they can't get an answer quickly, especially after hours, they don't wait. They move on. Phone inquiries represent some of the highest-intent moments in the booking funnel, and right now many of those calls go nowhere.

For operators

Tour, activity and experience businesses are typically small teams working in guest-facing environments. They're leading tours, driving transfers, running experiences, and they physically cannot answer every call or respond to every website inquiry in real time. We estimate around 40% of inbound calls go unanswered across many operators. Each one represents a potential booking lost to a competitor or simply abandoned.

Chaty addresses this without asking operators to change how they work. It handles repetitive questions, qualifies inquiries, routes important calls to staff and follows up automatically via SMS, freeing teams to focus on delivering the experience rather than managing the front line.

Now that the product is built, what's your strategy for customer acquisition?

Our primary channel is partnership-led. We're building integrations and referral relationships with the booking platforms our customers already use: Rezdy, FareHarbor, Roller, Bókun, Peek Pro, Bookeo and Checkfront. These platforms have established trust with operators and facilitate organic product discovery, where Chaty makes sense as a complementary add-on to their core offering. We're activating through marketplace listings, co-marketing, case studies and joint campaigns.

In parallel, we're running industry education: webinars and sessions focused on AI adoption in tourism, which builds awareness while pre-qualifying prospects. Direct sales and onboarding remains important for early-stage conversion, but over time, partner channels will carry the majority of acquisition. The goal is for Chaty to be discoverable inside the ecosystems operators already live in.

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

The need came from lived experience. James, our founder, runs Wildflower Gin, a Gold Coast tourism business offering distillery visits, tastings and gin masterclasses. When staff were running experiences or away from the office, inquiries went unanswered. Those weren't just missed calls; they were missed bookings from customers who were ready to say yes but needed a quick answer first.

That experience became the starting point for Chaty. We've since worked with around 30 tour, activity and experience businesses across different operator types to validate the problem and understand the specific use cases that matter: availability checks, weather queries, group booking workflows, cancellation policies, accessibility questions and the exact moments when a human needs to step in.

On market size: Australia alone had 361,270 tourism-related businesses as of June 2025, per Tourism Research Australia. The global tours, activities and attractions market was estimated at $271 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $342 billion by 2029. Our initial focus is on operators already using booking systems: businesses that are digitally active and managing high-intent inquiries online, which represents a large and well-defined addressable segment.

How and when will you make money?

We're already generating revenue. Operators pay a recurring monthly subscription scaled to usage (phone minutes, website chat volume and booking-system access), with additional usage-based charges above plan thresholds.

Revenue grows through new customer acquisition, increased usage from existing customers and expansion into additional operator verticals via partner channels. The flexible pricing structure also supports retention: Operators who reduce spend in quieter months stay on the platform rather than churning, which keeps lifetime value high.

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

Chaty was founded by James Greig, who previously co-founded iVvy, an Australian venue booking platform that grew into a global SaaS used by thousands of venues across 13 countries, including Accor, Wembley Stadium and Australian Venue Co. James is also a fellow of Griffith University, chair of the Griffith Industry Advisory Board and the founder of Wildflower Gin, where the problem Chaty solves became real.

The broader founding team worked alongside James at iVvy and brings directly relevant experience across every function the business needs at this stage. Rachael Grimsey (head of sales and onboarding) was previously SVP of global sales & partnerships at iVvy. Tim Whitcroft (CTO) was head of integrations at iVvy. Jake Falkinder (marketing) held senior marketing roles at Mantra Hotel Group, Entertainment Group and Ignite Travel.

We've built this type of product before, and we've felt this problem ourselves. That combination of proven SaaS execution experience and genuine operator perspective is the foundation we're building on.

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

Within the team, we've built across technology, hospitality, sales, support and operations, and we actively look for different industry perspectives rather than hiring from a single background. The founding team itself reflects that: technical, commercial and operational experience drawn from different parts of the travel and hospitality sector.

From a product perspective, Chaty is designed to serve operators and travelers of all kinds. It handles callers who prefer to phone rather than fill out a form online. It supports inquiries after hours, across time zones and for needs that often get deprioritized in busy operations: accessibility queries, special requirements, complex group bookings. The usage-based pricing model also means smaller operators, including sole traders and family-run businesses, can access the same AI capability as larger ones at a price that makes sense for their scale.

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

Building reliable voice AI in a landscape that's changing underneath you.

The underlying models, voice quality, latency, costs and competitive dynamics are all evolving quickly. Customers expect conversations that feel natural and accurate. Operators need confidence that the AI won't misrepresent availability, handle a booking enquiry incorrectly or fail to escalate at the right moment. Getting that balance right, reliable enough to trust with real customer conversations and flexible enough to improve as the technology matures, has been the hardest sustained challenge.

The other discipline has been resisting scope creep in a market full of AI hype. Businesses have become appropriately skeptical of broad AI promises, and adoption happens when a tool solves a specific, visible commercial problem. For us, that's missed calls and lost bookings. Staying focused on that outcome, rather than chasing feature breadth or category expansion too early, has been a discipline worth maintaining.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact. Why are you going to be one of the lucky ones? 

Most travel startups struggle because they ask operators to change behavior, adopt unfamiliar workflows or trust an unproven tool with something critical. Chaty doesn't ask for any of that. We plug into the systems operators already use, solve a problem they already know they have and deliver an outcome they can measure from week one.

The founder credibility matters here in a way it doesn't for most software companies. James built iVvy from a startup into a global SaaS business. He then ran a tourism operation and experienced the exact problem Chaty addresses. That's not a market thesis; it's a lived insight with a proven track record of execution behind it.

And rather than building a sales team from scratch to reach operators, we're embedding inside the distribution channels they already trust. Operators working inside FareHarbor, Rezdy or Roller don't need to be persuaded that booking-integrated AI is a good idea; they just need to know Chaty exists. That changes the acquisition dynamic entirely.

A year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in?

A year from now, we expect Chaty to have moved from early validation to a proven, revenue-generating SaaS business with a clear pathway to scale.

We'll have a strong base of paying operators using Chaty across phone, website chat, SMS and booking-system integrations. We'll have deeper partnerships with key booking platforms, making Chaty a natural and discoverable add-on within the ecosystems operators already trust. And we'll have the customer case studies and measurable outcomes (reduced missed calls, faster response times, more enquiries converted) to fuel the next phase of growth with evidence rather than promises.

What is your endgame? (Going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc.)

To become the default AI-powered customer service layer for tour, activity and experience operators, across phone, chat and messaging.

In the near term, our focus is on building the business: recurring revenue, booking-system partnerships and proving the model across our core markets. Over time, there are several credible paths forward. Chaty could continue as a standalone private SaaS with a defensible position through integrations and partner channels. There are also acquisition scenarios worth considering: booking platforms, travel technology companies, telecommunications providers and customer-service software businesses all have strategic reasons to want what we're building.

Our priority is to build the kind of business that creates real options. If we deliver measurable value for operators and build strong partner distribution, the right long-term outcome, whether private growth, acquisition or something else, will take care of itself.