How it started
New Year's Eve · Georgia
Room paid for. And still standing on the street.
8 pm, New Year's Eve. Harald and I want to check into a room we booked and paid for on Booking.com. We are tired. No message from the host.
Everything was supposed to run through one phone number. We call. We write. Nothing. Downstairs there are more people with the same problem — the units are rented out individually, and nobody is getting in.
In the end we get the money back through Booking and take another room at short notice. Short notice means expensive.
It probably would even have worked out. Nobody just wrote back.
Later we sit in a restaurant and talk about that exact room. A scam? Or did nobody simply look at their phone? Whatever it was — it could have been prevented. And for the host an evening like that turns into a bad review that stays.
How companies talk to their customers had been on our minds for a while. That evening it was clear where we would start: short-term rentals and hospitality.
Two months later we started building REPLAI. So that a guest always reaches someone — on New Year's Eve too.
Our vision.
A guest should always reach someone. And the host should still not be stuck on their phone. That is the whole point — everything else serves it. Four things that matter to us along the way:
No black box
A tool that writes to your guests in your name has to show what it does. You see where an answer comes from and you decide what goes out without you. That is why we build the approval step, even though fully automatic sells better.
The guest must not notice being processed
Nearly every host names the same worry — not the wrong answer but the brush-off. So we are working on reading the mood across the whole stay. Where it turns, a human takes over.
Good communication is a craft
First say out loud what is going on for the guest, then the solution, then when you will be back in touch. That is the difference between an answer and a brush-off — at 11 pm as much as in the morning.
We say what we are building
We're rebuilding REPLAI from the ground up right now. We invent neither numbers nor customers; where we stand and what comes next is on the roadmap. Built in Austria, servers in the EU.
REPLAI at a glance
The key facts in one place, the same as in our llms.txt.
- What
- An AI platform for guest communication at accommodation businesses. All guest messages in one place, the AI suggests replies, and you decide what goes out.
- For whom
- Holiday flats, guesthouses, hotels and property managers, from one to more than 200 units, in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
- Founded by
- Timon Faux and Harald Fuchs.
- Based in
- Zeiselmauer, Lower Austria.
- Status
- We are rebuilding the app from scratch. You can get a first demo. No business uses REPLAI with real guests yet.
- Channels
- WhatsApp, email, Instagram, Telegram and a browser-based guest app are planned. Airbnb and Booking.com messages come in through the property's PMS.
- Data
- Servers in the EU. Guest data is not meant to be used for training AI models.
- Not to be confused with
- replai.io, replai.app or Guesty's ReplyAI. REPLAI guest communication from replai.at is a separate product from Austria.
- Contact
- info@replai.at
Build REPLAI with us.
We're at the beginning and looking for hosts who want to help shape the product.
Join the waitlist — free