Alō Index Raises $1.9M Pre-Seed Round to Transform Sustainable Hotel Procurement

The company will use the capital to enhance the features of its sustainable hotel platform for corporate travel.

Alō Index, the first platform that matches corporate travel buyers with ESG targets to the hotels that can fulfill them, announced today that it has raised a $1.9M pre-seed funding round led by Impellent Ventures with participation from Techstars and strategic angel investors. The company will use the capital raised in this round to advance its platform’s reporting and verification features and expedite its hotel onboarding process.

Enterprises spend more than $400B each year on hotel stays for their business travelers. Finding hotels with ESG initiatives has become an increased focus for corporate travel managers as businesses across the globe are accelerating their efforts to contract with suppliers that have sustainability measures in place. However, massive amounts of unmanaged and unverified ESG data block corporate travel managers with ESG targets from finding hotels that can fulfill them. This has led to frustration and inefficiencies for both corporate travel buyers and hotels, as buyers are failing to guide ESG spending decisions to meet their mandates, and hotels are losing the opportunity to monetize their sustainability efforts, which they’ve collectively spent over $70B on across the globe.

Co-founded by CEO Anna Feinberg, a former corporate travel manager, and COO Leanne Turner, a former hotel sales representative turned corporate travel manager, Alō Index is purpose-built to tackle the challenges that travel managers and hotels face in hitting their respective targets. Alō Index evaluates verified zero-party data directly from individual hotel properties to deliver head-to-head comparisons and actionable insights to travel managers, matching them with hotel options based on their corporate targets and hotel attributes. The platform positions travel managers to contract with the right hotels, and in turn, empowers hotels to win contracts, fill more rooms, and increase their sustainability efforts.

“Having experienced the corporate hotel market from both sides, we deeply understand the need for enterprises to be able to quickly compare and match to hotels that meet their sustainability priorities and budget, and for hotels on the other hand, to be able to harness the money they’ve invested towards sustainability initiatives into a competitive advantage,” said Feinberg and Turner. “Demand for sustainable travel is unprecedented, and this fresh capital will allow us to further deliver on our mission to unlock ESG goals for both enterprises and hotels.”

"It didn't take us long to 'get to yes' with Anna and Leanne – they're mission-driven, domain experts who were like bullets to a target,” said Phil Beauregard, Managing Partner of Impellent Ventures. “Building in this space is difficult, but ultimately the largest successes come from the longest, most arduous toils. We think this industry is ripe for disruption in the new era of conscious spending – and this team has the chops and poise to persevere through it. We're psyched to be involved. It's a special opportunity that we couldn't pass up."

This news comes on the heels of a period of momentum for Alō Index, including the company’s participation in Techstars in 2023.

"All of us at Techstars New York City were thrilled to land Alō Index in our most recent class, and I can say from first-hand experience working with Anna and Leanne that this is a co-founding team with deep industry experience and relationships, relentless work ethic, and the foundation in place for an incredible culture as they scale the business,” said Jordan Fliegel, Managing Director of Techstars New York City. “Alō Index is a perfect example of a company solving a real problem, born of personal experience, with the right team to pull it off, and in a large and overlooked market with corporate travel."

About Alō Index

Alō Index unlocks corporate travel ESG goals for Fortune 5000 enterprises with the only end-to-end solution that provides zero party data directly from hotels, actionable insights for travel managers, and simple scores for travelers at the point of sale. Finally managers can get back to business with standardized hotel benchmarks in every E, S, and G category that helps all stakeholders reach their targets.

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