Dallas entrepreneur Sloan Dean saw a problem with the hospitality industry’s operating model and set out to help fix it with AI.

The result: AI Hospitality Group, a new startup that calls itself an AI-native hotel operator. The company, which recently launched, said its 60-plus back-office AI agents free up on-property staff to concentrate on in-person customer service.

“Hotel owners don’t have a tools problem. They have an operating-model problem,” Dean, the founder and CEO, said in a statement.

Former Remington Hospitality CEO Sloan Dean founded startup AI Hospitality Group. [Photo: AI Hospitality Group]

AI Hospitality started with $7.5 million in seed funding. Rackhouse Venture Capital led the round with participation from Sierra Ventures, Dynamo Ventures and angel investors from the hospitality industry. The funding will enable it to expand the AI platform and bring hotels aboard as customers, AI Hospitality said. Rackhouse founder Kevin Novak now serves as a board observer.

More than a dashboard

Under a management agreement, AI Hospitality oversees a hotel’s profit-and-loss statement and handles other back-office operations, Dean said.

“The industry has spent a decade buying software while EBITDA margins eroded … [Our company] isn’t another vendor selling a dashboard,” he said.

Nearly two-thirds, or 65%, of North American hotels reported staffing shortages in 2025 amid rising labor costs, AI Hospitality said. Meanwhile, U.S. hotel EBITDA margins have slipped about 20% since 2019.

Letting AI do back-office work

AI Hospitality touts itself as the hotel industry’s first AI-native services company, a term it said was coined in 2024. Companies in this category employ AI to deliver outcomes rather than selling hospitality technology, AI Hospitality said.

Instead of licensing its software to hotel operators, AI Hospitality relies on proprietary technology to improve hotel operations and increase margins. AI agents can handle tasks like revenue management, accounting, marketing and recruiting, the company said.

The C-suite team

Dean founded AI Hospitality after more than five years as CEO of Remington Hospitality, a Dallas-based hotel management company.

Co-founder Kishan Dahya, the startup’s chief technology officer, is a third-generation hotelier who grew up in a family that ran Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott properties. He previously founded a venture-backed software company.

Eve Moore, the chief operating officer, rounds out the C-suite. She joined AI Hospitality from Rhode Island-based Magna Hospitality Group, where she was executive vice president of operations. Before that, Moore worked with Dean at Remington Hospitality.

‘Refreshed operating model’

AI Hospitality launched with two design partners: The Ameswell Hotel in Mountain View, California, and two properties managed by Aliso Viejo, California-based Parable Hospitality. Parable manages more than 30 hotels in California and Hawaii.

Simone Harms, Ameswell’s managing director, is an AI Hospitality adviser.

“What Sloan and [his] team are building is a refreshed operating model the industry has been waiting for,” Harms said. “This is a real partnership between management company, hotel and technology — AI doing the work that doesn’t belong in front of a guest, so our team can be fully present for the work that does.”