Frequently asked questions about Lance

What is Lance?

Lance is a collaborative AI platform for hotels. It runs an AI front desk that answers every guest call 24/7 on the hotel's existing phone system, plus guest messaging, an AI sales agent, live housekeeping boards, task management, preventive maintenance, management reporting and a mobile operations pad for staff. The agents do the repetitive work; your team stays in control of every action.

Who is Lance for?

Hotels and hotel groups: independent operators, branded properties and luxury hotels. Owners and general managers use it for visibility, the front desk for calls, housekeeping and maintenance for boards and work orders, and sales teams for inquiries. More than 50 hotels and 1,100+ hoteliers across Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG and Wyndham flags and independents run on Lance.

Is Lance a chatbot?

No. Lance is voice-first and operations-first: the AI front desk answers real phone calls and transfers them over your PBX, and the platform runs the back office (boards, tasks, maintenance, schedules). Guest texting is a follow-up channel the voice agent uses, not the product.

Which hotels use Lance?

Lance is live at 50+ hotels, including AC Hotel San Francisco Airport & Oyster Point Waterfront (AC Hotels by Marriott, OTO Development), Beal House Fort Walton Beach (Tapestry Collection by Hilton) and Hyatt Centric Mountain View. The AC Hotel case study reports 3,000+ guest calls answered a month and four hours of phone work taken off the desk every day.

Who makes Lance and where is it based?

Lance is built by Lance AI, Inc. in San Francisco, founded by Caleb Chan (CEO), Gatik Trivedi (CTO) and Gavin Brennen (COO). It is a Y Combinator company and announced a $5M seed round on April 28, 2026, backed by Y Combinator and SV Angel with angels from OpenAI and Expedia and the Johnson Family / OTO Development.

What does the Lance AI front desk do on a call?

It answers on the first ring with your hotel's greeting, answers FAQs from your own knowledge base, transfers to housekeeping, maintenance, reservations or the front desk with context, logs housekeeping and maintenance requests as work orders while the guest is still on the line, schedules wake-up calls, files complaints for a manager, and texts follow-ups such as a restaurant booking link or a request confirmation.

Does the AI front desk work with our existing phone system?

Yes. Lance connects over a SIP trunk alongside your PBX. Transfers are real transfers that ring the phones and extensions you already have, with ringback while it dials and a front-desk fallback if nobody answers. No new hardware is needed, and one switch turns the agent off so calls ring the desk as before.

What happens when the AI does not know the answer?

It does not guess. Below its confidence threshold it offers the front desk instead, and the question is captured, rewritten into clean FAQ wording and queued for your review with the call attached. Answer it once in the dashboard (or tell Lance in chat) and it is live on the next call.

Which languages does the voice agent speak?

99+ languages in one consistent, natural voice, with automatic language detection so guests are answered in the language they call in. Multilingual answering can be switched on or off per hotel.

Are calls recorded and logged?

Every call is logged with a transcript, the actions taken and the outcome, with optional recording. Managers see it in the dashboard, and a daily manager email summarises call volume, transfers by department and the top topics guests asked about.

How fast does it respond?

Sub-second. Speech-to-text, reasoning and voice are all streamed, so the guest hears the first words back well inside a second instead of waiting through a phone-tree pause.

Does the AI front desk replace my front desk team?

No. It answers the calls your team cannot get to and the questions that do not need a person, then routes everything else to the right people with the request already logged. The front desk keeps its full attention on the guest in the lobby.

What is Lance Boards?

Boards is the live room status board for housekeeping. It is built from the PMS housekeeping report you already print, balanced across attendants automatically, and worked from tablets on the floor: each attendant sees exactly what is theirs and status updates the moment a room is touched. AC Hotel South San Francisco builds its board in two minutes, down from two hours.

How does task management work in Lance?

Requests from guest calls, staff or direct entry become tracked work orders the moment they are captured, with a room, an owner and a status. Routing sends each one to the right team, notifications go to the people responsible, and the team resolves and closes them from the mobile pad while supervisors watch the board update in real time.

Does Lance handle preventive maintenance?

Yes. Preventive-maintenance templates define what to inspect, who does it and how often; readings for pool chemistry, HVAC and equipment are logged with timestamps; and facilities tracking shows what is due, in progress or recently completed. Completion records and reading logs are kept for compliance reviews.

Does Lance do labor scheduling?

Yes. Lance generates housekeeping and maintenance schedules from occupancy forecasts and your property's time-per-room standards using a constraint solver, so staffing matches actual demand. Schedules are ready to review, adjust and publish; managers stay in control.

What is the daily manager report?

A morning briefing email sent to supervisors before their shift covering overnight activity, open work orders and the day's priorities, with a Reply-to-Lance channel for follow-up questions. It is in active rollout and can be switched on per hotel with a per-hotel send time.

Is there a mobile app?

Yes. The mobile operations pad runs on managed tablets and phones for housekeeping, maintenance and the front desk: boards, tasks, room status, messaging and announcements, with PIN login per staff member. Staff update status from the floor and the board reflects it instantly.

What does the Lance AI sales agent do?

It captures group and event inquiries by phone (group size, dates, event type) and by email, organises them in a sales inbox, generates structured group briefs, and drafts replies that your team reviews, edits and approves. It amplifies a sales team's capacity; it is not an autonomous sender.

Will the sales agent email prospects on its own?

No. Every outbound response requires a human to review and approve before it is sent. Drafts are never auto-sent.

The full program is on the Security page.

Is Lance SOC 2 compliant?

Lance is SOC 2 audited, with encryption in transit and at rest, per-hotel isolation at the data layer, role-based access controls and audit trails. Lance never handles cardholder data: payment requests stay in your own PCI environment.

How does Lance encrypt data?

All data is encrypted in transit with TLS and at rest with AES-256. Keys are managed through enterprise-grade key management services with rotation policies.

How does Lance protect guest and hotel data?

Guest privacy is our top priority. Your data is only accessible to authorized users within your organization, and Lance never uses customer data to train public AI models without your explicit permission.

How does Lance ensure AI accuracy?

Lance combines grounded retrieval from your hotel’s own knowledge with human-in-the-loop review paths, so teams can audit and correct responses before they reach guests.

How does Lance handle AI transparency?

Every AI action is logged with source context and operator visibility, so your team can see what the system did and why.

What happens to our data if we stop using Lance?

You can export your data at any time. Upon contract termination, we delete customer data from active systems according to our retention policy and provide written confirmation on request.

How long does it take to deploy Lance?

Days, not months. The voice agent connects over a SIP trunk alongside your PBX, and boards, task management and scheduling install next to the property systems you already run without an API integration project. The knowledge base starts from your own FAQs and grows from real calls.

Do we need a PMS integration to start?

No. Lance operates alongside your PMS and brand systems rather than replacing them: work orders are tracked inside Lance, and the housekeeping board is built from the PMS housekeeping report you already print. Brand standards and reporting stay where they are.

How is Lance priced?

Lance is sold as a subscription per hotel, scoped to the products you turn on (for example the AI front desk on its own, or the full operations platform). Pricing depends on property size and the products in use. Book a demo for a quote for your property or group.

Can we turn the AI off?

Yes. One switch turns the voice agent off and calls ring the front desk exactly as before. Every AI action is logged, so you can audit what it did before you switch it back on.

How do we see a demo?

Book a time at lance.cal.com/caleb/lance or email founders@lance.live. Demos run on your own scenarios: your FAQs, your phone system and your housekeeping report.