The start-up plans to use the funding to expand its product and engineering team, and accelerate expansion into the UK, Europe, the US and the UAE.

Irish start-up Otel AI, which is building an AI platform for hotel managers, has announced a raise of €2m.

This latest round, announced yesterday (14 April), brings the company’s total funding to date to €2.8m following an initial €800,000 raise last year.

The new round was led by London-based pre-seed VC firm Playfair, along with participation from Nebular – which led last year’s funding round. Several angel investors including Paul Forster, co-founder of Indeed, also joined the round.

According to Otel, the start-up is tackling the complex environments present in the hotel industry by providing hotel managers and owners with an AI-driven platform to analyse their data and automate actions “without sensitive information ever leaving their environment”.

The company explained that its platform combines a hotel’s systems and turns them into a “single operational layer”, where AI organises tasks – such as pricing analysis or payroll alerts – into ‘Flows’, which run automatically and deliver outputs straight to the team’s inbox.

“Every general manager I speak to tells me the same thing – they walk in every morning, open six or seven systems, and spend the first hour just trying to understand how their hotel is doing,” said Paul Ryan, CEO and co-founder of Otel AI.

“By the time they have the picture, the morning is gone. We built Otel so that when a GM walks in, the picture is already there. The problems are flagged. The work is done. They walk into decisions, not data.”

Otel AI was founded in Dublin last year by Ryan and CTO Nikhil Patil, and, according to the start-up, already works with design partner hotels across Ireland and the UK, including the O’Callaghan Collection, Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel, Johnstown Estate and Killarney Park.

The start-up plans to use its new funding to expand its product and engineering team, and accelerate its expansion into the UK, Europe, the US, and the UAE. The company added that it is targeting independent hotels and groups in these regions that are operating three to 50 properties and “seeking operational leverage through AI rather than additional staff”.

Also as part of the round, Floor Bleeker – former group CTO of Accor – has joined Otel AI as a strategic adviser.

The start-up – which has grown from a team of two to 14 over the past year – also said it plans to continue hiring across engineering, product, customer success and commercial roles in 2026.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.