Akemi Tsunagawa is the founder & CEO of Bespoke, one of the fastest growing chatbot startups in the travel industry. Prior to Bespoke, Akemi worked at Fidelity Investments, Deloitte, and Macquarie Capital after graduating from UCLA.

Bespoke was founded in 2015 to offer authentic travel experiences beyond guidebooks. Its AI concierge, Bebot, is the most used multilingual chatbot in the hospitality space to enhance guest experiences. Bebot is currently servicing wide range of clients from International Airport to global hotel brands.

I founded “Bespoke” in 2015 to make the product that I’ve always wanted for myself. As a traveller, I’ve always enjoyed discovering little known places rather than major attractions featured in guidebooks. Today, Bebot is a platform that empowers travelers to enjoy the same sort of experiences as if they had people showing them around. That is how I started the company about 3 years ago, which has been the best decision I’ve made in my life so far.

I followed my passion rather than opportunities first; however, we did get lucky with getting the timing right eventually. We were focused on consumer facing services rather than business to consumer services for the first 6 months. As we conducted many user interviews, we quickly learned that many of our users were frustrated that locals didn’t understand foreign languages to take reservations at those local restaurants or even to answer very simple questions from travelers.