EXECUTIVE Q & A
The Human Advantage
RELAY CO-FOUNDER AND CEO CHRIS CHUANG ON THE PEOPLE BEHIND GREAT GUEST EXPERIENCES, WHY TECHNOLOGY MUST EARN TRUST, AND HOW HOTELS CAN IMPROVE WITH EVERY SHIFT.
The hotel industry has spent years transforming the parts of a stay guests actually see: booking, loyalty, mobile check-in, rooms, and amenities. Chris Chuang believes the next opportunity is helping hotel employees do their best work, because what happens behind the scenes shapes every guest’ s stay. Chuang is co-founder and CEO of Relay, a four-time founder, and a 2025 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Southeast Award winner. Relay’ s voice-first operational communication platform helps teams coordinate guest service, safety, and daily operations across more than 7,000 sites. Its customers include all of the top 10 North American hotel brands as well as Forbes Five-Star and AAA Five Diamond properties. doesn’ t disappear when a conversation ends. Hotels should be able to capture it and put it to work.
If a housekeeper notices a recurring room issue or an engineer discovers why equipment keeps failing, the next shift shouldn’ t start from scratch. That knowledge should carry forward.
We’ re investing in making that happen without asking employees to stop and complete another form that may miss the full story. Hotels should learn from what teams see and say daily, addressing small problems before they reach the guest.
HOTELS: Hotels have spent years perfecting what guests see. What have they overlooked behind the scenes? Chuang: Employee tools haven’ t always kept pace with guest-facing investments. Many teams still rely on radios, personal phones, paper logs, and word of mouth.
Consider a room that isn’ t ready because housekeeping discovers a maintenance issue. When they can reach engineering right away and let the front desk know what’ s happening, the team can get it sorted out faster. The guest never sees that backand-forth. They just get into their room
HOTELS: Relay recently raised $ 36 million. What are you building toward? Chuang: A platform that helps hotels get better with every shift. Today, Relay helps employees communicate, work across language barriers, and respond quickly to what is happening around the property. The next step is making sure useful information
60 hotelsmag. com Oct / Nov 2026