Startup Stage: First Wave AI automates hotel guest communications and revenue intelligence

First Wave AI

First Wave AI offers an AI platform for hotels that brings together guest communication, staff support and sales intelligence in one system. The platform processes conversations across channels to automate responses, support hotel teams and generate insights aimed at improving revenue and operations.

The Miami-based startup was founded in 2024.

Q: What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

First Wave AI is an AI operating system for hospitality that brings together guest communication, staff performance and revenue intelligence in one platform. 

We handle every guest interaction across inbound and proactive outbound channels including phone, text, chat and email. We support staff with real-time AI coaching and turn conversations into structured data that drives revenue and operational decisions.

The result is fewer missed bookings, higher conversion rates and real-time visibility across the business, with measurable ROI in weeks.

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

Business

We provide an AI platform for hotels built around three core layers:

• Omnichannel communication: AI handles guest interactions across phone, text, chat and email 
• People plus AI: tools for staff training, coaching and real-time assistance 
• Sales intelligence and productivity: converts conversations into insights that improve revenue and operations 

We sell into ownership groups and management companies and expand across portfolios.

Technology

Our platform ingests conversations across all channels, processes them in real time and converts them into structured insights that power automation, coaching and analytics.

We use a multi-model AI system with strong guardrails and retrieval to ensure accuracy and consistency. The system is designed for enterprise reliability, and we are finalizing SOC 2 compliance.

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

Strengths

• AI-native platform built from the ground up 
• Direct ROI tied to revenue recovery 
• Omnichannel plus operations plus intelligence in one system 
• Early traction with enterprise hospitality 

Weaknesses

• Early-stage startup
• Dependency on third-party AI models 
• Requires operational adoption from hotel teams 
• Limited brand awareness 

Opportunities

• Replace legacy call centers and fragmented tools 
• Expand into full hospitality operating system 
• Portfolio-wide enterprise rollouts 
• Upsell opportunities across higher-value products
• Deep workflow automation is extremely useful 

Threats

• Incumbents adding AI features 
• Horizontal AI platforms entering hospitality 
• Model commoditization 
• Long enterprise sales cycles 

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

Customer

• Long hold times or unanswered calls 
• Inconsistent or incorrect information 
• Slow responses across channels 
• Friction in booking and inquiry processes 

Industry

• Lost revenue from missed calls 
• Staff overwhelmed with repetitive inquiries 
• No visibility into guest conversations 
• Fragmented systems across channels 

We solve this by automating interactions, ensuring consistency and turning conversations into actionable data.

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

We target ownership groups and management companies with 5-50 properties, including independent luxury hotels and branded flags.

We leverage strong hospitality relationships, including former hospitality CEOs, to access decision makers.

Our approach is land-and-expand. We start with one property, prove ROI quickly, then expand across the portfolio.

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

We validated demand through direct conversations with hotel operators, pilot deployments across multiple properties and real-world testing of guest interactions.

We focused on measurable outcomes such as missed revenue, response times and operational efficiency.

The market includes millions of hotel rooms globally, with hospitality software representing a $20B+ opportunity. Our initial focus is communication automation, with expansion into a broader operating platform.

How and when will you make money?

We are already generating revenue through a SaaS subscription model. Pricing includes communication channels (phone, SMS, chat, email), per-user AI tools and setup fees.

Revenue scales as customers expand across properties and adopt more features.

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

The company is led by Philip Warthen, a former AWS product manager who built enterprise systems and AI-enabled platforms used by thousands of businesses. He also served as a captain in the U.S. Air Force.

The team includes AI engineers and product leaders, supported by advisors who are former CEOs of major hospitality brands such as Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection and Banyan Tree.

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

We are a minority and veteran-owned business and prioritize hiring based on merit across a globally distributed team with diverse backgrounds.

Our product improves accessibility through instant, multilingual support and consistent service for all guests.

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

The most difficult challenge has been ensuring reliability and trust in AI-driven guest interactions. This includes solving for accuracy, context retention and consistency in real-world environments while meeting enterprise expectations.

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

We are not a marketplace or demand-generation platform. We operate in the core operational layer of hospitality.

Our product is tied directly to revenue and cost savings, integrates into daily workflows and delivers immediate ROI. This creates strong retention and long-term defensibility.

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

We expect to be deployed across 200-500 properties with multiple enterprise portfolio agreements.

The platform will evolve into a unified communication and intelligence layer with deeper analytics, stronger automation and tighter integration into hotel operations.

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

Our goal is to build a category-defining platform and take the company public within 7–10 years, targeting 40,000 properties on the platform.

We are raising capital from strategic investors to accelerate distribution, partnerships and long-term growth toward that outcome.