Akia automates the stay. Loyalist turns the guest into revenue.
Akia automates guest messaging, phone calls and digital check-in for hotels and vacation rentals, and it takes most of that traffic off a front desk before anyone sees it. Loyalist’s difference is everything off the room rate: it reads the point of sale and the events tool, lands banquet revenue on the guest, and briefs the restaurant floor, not the stay alone.
Akia
An AI guest messaging platform for hotels.
- 01Message volume is the problem, and you want AI answering most of it before it reaches the front desk.
- 02You run hotels or vacation rentals and need digital check-in, ID verification and door codes inside the same flow.
- 03You want one agent on the phone line as well as the texts, holding a real conversation and taking payment before it hangs up.
Loyalist
The AI platform that turns guest data into revenue.
- 01You want one profile per guest, built from all your guest data, and personalized campaigns and automations that drive revenue off it.
- 02Food and beverage is real revenue. Checks, reservations and private dining land on the same profile as the stay, which a messaging platform never sees.
- 03You want the floor briefed, not only the inbox. Notes and tags reach the reservation book and a pre-shift report lands before service.
Akia and Loyalist, axis by axis.
Both message guests and both read a hotel PMS. The split is what happens off the room rate: the stay itself, or the check, the booking and the event behind it.
| Axis | Akia | Loyalist |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | The stay: messaging, check-in and the calls during it. | A guest profile from POS, reservations, reviews and events, so what someone spends at the table counts toward who they are. |
| Who it is for | Hotels, resorts and vacation rentals. | Restaurants, hotels and members clubs, from one room to fifty locations. |
| Where the data comes from | The property management system. | The point of sale, the reservation book, events, reviews and the hotel PMS together. |
| What it measures | Messages resolved and in-stay upsells. | Covers booked and revenue, attributed to the campaign that drove them. |
Akia is focused on the stay. Loyalist drives revenue from your guest data.
Akia works inside the stay: the pre-arrival text, the check-in, the front desk call it answers. Loyalist works on the record behind it. A guest stays three nights, eats twice in your dining room and books the private room for March. The PMS holds the room rate. Loyalist holds the rest, and Mews, Cloudbeds and Opera are on our hub, so the stay reaches it too.
- Two-way guest messaging by SMS
- Automated journeys triggered by guest milestones
- AI-drafted review replies across platforms
- Reading guest data from your hotel PMS
- Digital check-in with government ID and selfie verification
- An AI voice agent that holds the call and takes payment
- Guidebooks, door codes and in-stay upsells
- See the revenue a campaign booked, read back from your reservation platform
- Checks, covers and what a guest actually ordered on their profile
- Reservations and private dining, from Resy, Tripleseat and Perfect Venue
- Notes and tags written into the reservation book before service
- Event intake forms, floor blocking and post-event follow-up in one suite
What you get with Loyalist.
- Count what they spend at the table. Loyalist reads the point of sale, so what a guest spends in the dining room counts toward who they are. A property management system knows the room rate, not the table.
- Bank the banquet on the guest. Resy, SevenRooms, OpenTable, Tripleseat and Perfect Venue feed the record, so banquet revenue lands on the guest who booked it.
- Brief the restaurant floor. Notes and tags reach the reservation book and a pre-shift report names who is booked tonight. Akia reaches the guest on their phone during the stay.
- Market on the whole guest, not the stay. Personalized campaigns and automations run from spend, visits and what was ordered, not only from stay data.
- Measure in covers. A campaign reports the tables it booked and the revenue behind them.
Simple, guided setup
Our onboarding team does it with you, start to finish. Akia keeps doing its job throughout, and there is no engineering project on your side.
- 01
Connect your existing software platforms
Your POS, reservation platform, ordering, events and reviews. Nothing to build on your side.
- 02
Let Loyalist clean up your data
Your history loads into the guest profiles you already have, cleaned of duplicates before anything merges.
- 03
You brief the floor
Notes and tags write back to your book, and the first pre-shift report lands before service.
Why operators love Loyalist.
Working with Loyalist has been a game changer for us. The platform provides unparalleled insight into the lifeline of our guests, allowing us to track their journey across all our properties. This level of visibility has helped us tailor our guest experience in ways that were never possible before.
Kyra Burner Major Food Group Loyalist’s centralized VIP line and guest look-up feature have centralized our guest relations, and made it easier for our teams to find the relevant information about our diners. As a result, our restaurant teams can focus on what they do best: deliver world-class dining experiences.
Mattos Hospitality We are a small group of three restaurants. We thought we’d try Loyalist to level up our marketing for our two bigger, more established restaurants. But within two weeks the return on marketing outreach through Loyalist was so undeniably strong that there was no way we weren’t going to enroll the third restaurant. It’s one of the biggest strides we’ve taken as small, independent operators.
Elizabeth Sharp Glendale Hospitality Top restaurant groups use Loyalist daily:
Is Akia a restaurant product?
Not primarily. Akia is built for hotels, resorts and vacation rentals. Their published customers are hotel brands and their integrations are property management systems rather than points of sale. If the question is about your dining room, these two are not solving the same problem.
Can a hotel run both?
Yes, and it is a clean split. Akia handles the stay, from the pre-arrival text to check-in and the front desk line. Loyalist handles the guest record behind it, including restaurant spend, reservations and private events. Mews, Cloudbeds and Opera are on our integrations hub, so the stay still reaches the profile.
When is Akia the better choice?
When the problem is message volume during a stay. If guests are texting about pool hours, late checkout and door codes faster than your team can answer, that is what Akia was built for, and Loyalist has no product there.
When is Loyalist the better choice?
When food and beverage is real revenue. What a guest spends at the table counts toward who they are, the banquet they booked lands on their record, and the restaurant floor is briefed rather than only the front desk.
Which is better for a hotel with restaurants, Akia or Loyalist?
They answer different questions. Akia is the better answer to how the stay runs with fewer staff. Loyalist is the better answer to what a guest is worth and how to bring them back. A property where the restaurant and the private dining room carry real revenue usually has the second problem, because the PMS cannot see either.
Does Loyalist message guests?
Yes. Email, SMS and WhatsApp, with a two-way inbox where replies thread onto the guest record, plus a VIP line your team answers and a routed phone tree that hands a recognized caller to a manager. The difference is what decides who gets the message, which is spend, visit history and what they ordered.
Does Loyalist handle check-in or door codes?
No. Loyalist is a guest data, CRM and loyalty platform, and the arrival flow stays wherever you run it today. What it adds is the record behind that arrival, so a returning guest is recognized rather than processed.
Does Loyalist read our property management system?
Yes. Mews, Cloudbeds and Opera are on our integrations hub, so stays resolve onto the same profile as restaurant checks, reservations, reviews and private events. For a group with rooms and a dining room, that is the only place those two halves meet.
Evaluate Loyalist against Akia with an AI agent and see which one fits your business better.
