The Problem I Kept Seeing
I spent time working with independent hotels across Southeast Asia — properties with 8 rooms, 20 rooms, 40 rooms — and every single one had the same conversation with me. They were spending hours every week reading and replying to reviews in languages they barely spoke, often copy-pasting the same generic response. When they missed a review, they didn't know. When a guest had a bad experience, no one followed up.
At the same time, these hotels were paying Booking.com and Agoda 20–25% commission on bookings from guests who had already stayed with them — guests who loved the property, who would have booked direct if they'd received a personal offer. Nobody was sending that offer. Not because they didn't want to. Because they had no system for it and no time to build one.
The software that existed was built for chains. Enterprise PMS platforms, complex integrations, annual contracts, onboarding calls. A 15-room guesthouse in Chiang Mai doesn't need a six-month implementation — they need something that works on Tuesday morning before the first guests check in.
So we built HoteliaOS. The entire premise is that boutique hotels compete on the personal relationship — and the software should amplify that relationship, not replace it with another layer of complexity.
What We Believe
Direct relationships beat algorithmic reach — every time.
A guest who knows your name is worth ten strangers who found you on an OTA. Every tool we build is designed to deepen the relationship between a hotel and its guests, not outsource it to a platform.
Complexity is not a feature.
Most hospitality software is built to impress procurement committees, not to help a hotel owner at 7am. We ship things that work immediately. If it takes more than five minutes to set up, we rebuild it.
Small hotels deserve serious tools.
Independent properties generate billions in tourism revenue globally but have access to a fraction of the tooling that chain hotels do. That gap is where we work.
Automation should amplify the human touch, not erase it.
AI writes the first draft. You decide what goes out. We will never fully automate guest communication because the point is for it to feel personal — and guests can tell the difference.
A Small Team With Hospitality in Their DNA
Raj Vadivelu
Founder
15 years in hotel digital marketing across Pan Pacific, Le Meridien, Equatorial, and CHM Hotels. Built revenue and direct booking strategies for hundreds of properties across Southeast Asia before starting HoteliaOS to fix what no enterprise tool could.
→ LinkedInRowena Lee
Head of Marketing
11 years across regional marketing and partnerships at Pik Film, plus prior agency work with Astro Radio and Zee Entertainment. Brings the storytelling and partnership instincts that turn product features into real customer relationships.
→ LinkedInWhere We Are
HoteliaOS is in active beta. We're onboarding founding member properties across Southeast Asia — with a particular focus on multilingual markets like Singapore and Malaysia, where boutique hotels serve guests in English, Mandarin, Bahasa, and Thai every day. Every feature has been designed with real guests, real reviews, and real booking flows — not hypothetical enterprise use cases.
The core product — AI review replies, pre-stay upsell emails, post-stay review requests, and return guest campaigns — works today. We are actively building based on what beta users tell us is missing. Recent additions came directly from conversations with hotel owners who showed us what they actually needed.
We are a small team focused entirely on independent hospitality. We don't have a sales team to impress. We don't have venture capital deadlines to hit. We have hotels using the product and feedback to action — and that's the pace we build at.