The Tech-Driven Personalization Hoteliers Need Finally Arrives

In hospitality, the magic often hides and resides in the small moments: a discreet amenity, the right wine waiting in the room, a quiet acknowledgment of a life milestone…all of these can transform a stay into a story.

Yet in some of the world’s most prestigious hotels, these details are still tracked on Post-It notes, Excel sheets, or in the memory of a single staff member.

That paradox — an industry built on personalization but relying on outdated tools — sparked the creation of Abra Hospitality, founded by wife-husband team Dana Ellis (Jaffe) and Josh Ellis.

Together the pair have complementary strengths. He’s a former management consultant and sales leader in high-growth tech and AI, and she’s spent years managing luxury hotels in New York and Hawaii at brands like Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and Relais & Châteaux.

What unites them is a belief that technology should enhance the art of service, not diminish it.

From Manhattan to Maui

The Ellises left New York for Maui six years ago, looking for a slower pace and a community that lived and breathed hospitality. When Covid shut the island down months later, the decision proved prescient.

“Personally, it was a surreal experience watching everything play out at home during the pandemic while we were isolated here on the island,” recalls Josh.

Professionally speaking, “It was safe, but it also showed us how fragile tourism is and what an important role it plays in the lives of so many people — especially in Hawaii,” Dana says.

Inefficiencies had been obvious for years.

“At some hotels, guest preferences are stored in notebooks or in someone’s head,” she remarks. “By relying on superhero staff who remember everything, when they leave the knowledge leaves too.”

It was out of those misgivings about the lost knowledge and opportunities to improve the guest experience that Abra was born. Dana brought the guest-facing sensibility of how to create genuine, emotionally resonant experiences, while Josh focused on solving the operational nightmare of scattered data.

Together, they began sketching out a platform that could give hotel teams the tools to deliver personalization consistently, while protecting the culture that makes great hospitality thrive.

Managing data is often one of the greatest challenges for hotels, even at some of the most recognized properties. The lack of structure also drains resources.

“Every night, someone spends hours building a guest briefing sheet,” Josh adds. “Meanwhile, front-line staff are learning new things about guests every day with no place to record them.”

This is where Abra intends to come in: by replacing the patchwork of knowledge about the guest experience with a secure, centralized platform. Every staff member has a login, and preferences are categorized by department.

The system automatically routes preferences to the relevant department: a bedding request to housekeeping, a wine preference to F&B, a room note from the front desk. Secure logins are made on a tablet that replaces the traditional clipboard.

On top of this structure sits an AI engine that evolves with each stay and tracks the development of a guest’s experience. They begin in the system as “mystery guests.”

Once enough details are gathered, they become “wow ready.”

When a personalized action is delivered — for example, a stuffed animal waiting in the room for a child who shared with a porter that she misses her puppy — they become “wow guests.” At one pioneer property, that process generated more than $25,000 per month in repeat bookings tied directly to these wow moments.

Markus Schale, the managing director of Hotel Wailea and Private Label Collection, offers a resounding endorsement: “Abra’s impact on guest experience, hotel culture, and our bottom line has been extraordinary. I can’t imagine operating without it and I see this becoming an essential piece of the hotel tech stack.”

Why Advisors Should Care

Abra aims to create actionable data: a direct, structured pathway from advisors to operations. Instead of an email chain, a client preferences and special notes are logged directly into a central, secure system where staff can act on it.

Equally important, Abra opens visibility.

“Advisors often don’t know how a stay went until the client tells them,” Josh explains.

With Abra, they can see above-and-beyond gestures logged by staff or service issues flagged on property in almost real time. That context strengthens the advisor role as advocates.

Gilad Berenstein, Virtuoso Board Member and founder of Brook Bay Capital, LLC, frames it this way: “Personalization is at the core of luxury and of hospitality. But due to disconnected systems and fragmentation, countless opportunities for personalization and meaningful human connection are missed. Systems like Abra can help to build a more connected, more personalized future for our industry.”

Abra also aims to address hospitality’s labor crisis. Every time a staff member records a preference that leads to a wow moment, the system tracks it. Managers can recognize contributions, celebrate top performers, and use the data in performance evaluations.

“Recognition builds culture,” Dana says. “For too long, service moments have been invisible. Abra makes them visible, and that keeps good people engaged.”

On the Horizon

Abra launched officially in March, with integrations already live on Opera Cloud, Maestro and more. The company’s list of clients is growing quickly, and they are already partnering with some of the world’s most iconic properties.

Independent properties are the early adopters, Dana explains: “They live and die by personalization, and they’re drowning in manual work. When they see how Abra helps, the excitement is immediate.”

Longer term, the vision is broader. Josh describes Abra as an “operational intelligence layer” for hospitality, synthesizing data from PMS, point-of-sale, and task-management systems. AI then distills the noise into recommendations, ensuring the right information reaches the right staff member at the right time.

For advisors, that means confidence their requests are implemented, visibility into the client experience and stronger partnerships with the hotels that embrace the platform.

“Hospitality should feel like magic,” Dana says.

Josh agrees: “Our mission is to make sure that magic happens more often – for guests, for staff and for the advisors who bring them together.”

Jacques Ledbetter is a Luxury Travel Advisor contributor and founder of The Luxe Ledger newsletter. 

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