iovox has completed the acquisition of HeyGuest, a UK-based conversational AI platform built specifically for hospitality operators. The deal brings together two complementary businesses – iovox’s global communications infrastructure and over £1 billion in voice-based hospitality bookings on one side, and HeyGuest’s omnichannel engagement technology on the other to form a dedicated hospitality division within the iovox group.
The acquisition takes immediate effect. HeyGuest operates as a standalone division under the iovox umbrella, with the founding team retaining central roles in product and strategy.
Why Hospitality, and Why Now
Hospitality operators are under sustained pressure on two fronts: rising labour costs that make it harder to staff every channel, and growing guest expectations around speed and convenience. The gap between what guests want and what an operator can realistically provide has widened and that gap is where automated AI conversation has the clearest commercial case.
iovox has been part of the hospitality industry for years through its voice automation and reservation technology, delivering proven booking increases of up to 42%. That experience, tracking, routing, and analysing millions of phone-based bookings gave the business a clear picture of where operators were losing revenue and where costs were unnecessarily high. The HeyGuest acquisition extends that capability from voice alone to every channel a guest might use to make contact.
What the Combined Business Delivers
HeyGuest built its reputation on something deceptively simple: never letting a guest interaction go unanswered. By automating conversations across phone, web chat, SMS, and social, it functions as a round-the-clock contact layer that operators can rely on without adding headcount. Rather than routing guest enquiries to a human team member who may be occupied, the platform handles reservations, FAQs, and follow-up conversations automatically capturing booking opportunities that would otherwise go unanswered, which in turn reduces the volume of inbound calls that staff need to manage manually.
Joining iovox removes the ceiling on how far that model can travel, giving the founding team the global infrastructure to bring it to operators across the UK, Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific. Combined with iovox’s AI Agents, Insights, and Voicemail products, the division can now offer hospitality operators a complete picture of every guest interaction alongside the automation tools to act on it. That combination of visibility and action across both voice and digital is what the two businesses are building towards together.
Having facilitated millions of phone bookings in hospitality, iovox has set the standard for voice automation at scale,” said Ryan Gallagher, Co-Founder and CEO of iovox. “We are now leveraging that strength to equip hospitality businesses to manage and automate the full guest conversation across AI-based voice, text, web chat, and social channels. Launching HeyGuest as a dedicated division allows us to create tailor-made functionality in hospitality, just as we advance our AI solutions for our automotive, real estate and healthcare customers.”
The HeyGuest Founders on Joining iovox
“We built HeyGuest to help forward-thinking operators survive and thrive in a high-cost environment,” said Adam Troman, Co-Founder and CEO of HeyGuest. “Joining with iovox is a game-changer for us and our clients. It means we can deploy our technology faster and with more confidence than ever before. We’re also well-aligned with the values of iovox related to how to best serve customers. Being part of iovox is an exciting opportunity for our team.”
Charlton Santana, Co-Founder and CTO of HeyGuest, added, “The synergy here is rare. iovox understands the data and the telco environments better than anyone, and we understand the nuance of the guest journey. Together, we are solving the efficiency paradox that keeps restaurant owners up at night: how to capture 100% of booking opportunities and lower costs, all while improving the guest experience. That’s exactly what we can now do by being part of iovox.”
What Comes Next?
The combined teams are already working on an integrated product roadmap. Further product and personnel announcements are expected in the months ahead as the division builds out its offering and accelerates its international rollout.
About HeyGuest (an iovox division)
HeyGuest is iovox’s dedicated hospitality AI division, helping operators automate guest interactions across voice, text, web chat, and social channels. It is the only platform offering total channel coverage for hospitality at a globally competitive price point. Learn more at heyguest.ai.
About iovox
iovox is a global communications analytics and automation platform serving the automotive, real estate, healthcare, and hospitality sectors. Its AI platform built around Agents, Insights, and Voicemail reaches more than 500,000 businesses daily across offices in London, Paris, and San Francisco. Learn more at iovox.com.