WRIO wins Innovate UK grant

WRIO Ltd said on May 18 that it had secured an Innovate UK-backed grant for Project Allegro, a hospitality technology program it is developing with Accor and other international partners. The London-based company described the work as focused on automation and scaling tools for hotels and resorts, according to a post by Alexey Anshakov, who identifies himself online with WRIO. ITEA, the Eureka software innovation program, lists Project Allegro as a seven-partner initiative spanning Canada and the United Kingdom from May 2026 to December 2028. ### Who is behind the project? ITEA lists Operto Guest Technologies Inc. of Canada as the project leader and names WRIO Ltd as one of the participating partners. The project page says Allegro is part of ITEA Call 2024 and sits in the “Smart Communities” category. WRIO’s partner profile on ITEA describes the company as a small and medium-sized enterprise in the United Kingdom focused on automation, business intelligence and robotic process automation. (s3.amazonaws.com) Accor was named by Anshakov as a partner in the consortium. Accor’s public materials show the hotel group has been expanding its technology and innovation work, including through hospitality-focused digital tools and developer-facing APIs, though the company’s public documents page did not independently detail Project Allegro in the material reviewed. (itea4.org) ### What does Project Allegro say it will build? ITEA’s project description says Allegro aims to create an AI-based hospitality platform that uses conversational and generative AI for guest communication and content creation. The same description says a staff application is intended to streamline operations and resource allocation, while an operator dashboard using machine learning would provide data to improve efficiency, guest satisfaction and profitability. (group.accor.com) Anshakov said the project is aimed at “automation and scaling” for hotel and resort operations, with an emphasis on multi-site use cases. That framing aligns with WRIO’s own public description of its business, which says it specializes in streamlining data transfers and automating workflows. ### Where does Innovate UK fit in? (itea4.org) Innovate UK is the United Kingdom’s national innovation agency and is part of UK Research and Innovation, according to the agency’s government page. UKRI says Innovate UK publishes funded-project information and that further project details are published once a project has started. WRIO did not publish grant-value details in the material reviewed. (s3.amazonaws.com) The available public evidence supports that WRIO is a UK company participating in an ITEA project that started in May 2026, and that Anshakov said the work had won Innovate UK support. ### Why are hotel operators likely to watch the project? (gov.uk) ITEA’s description says the platform is intended to support staff operations, resource allocation and management insight across hospitality settings. Anshakov said the work is meant to address scaling problems in hotels and resorts, including workflows relevant to larger or multi-property operations. (find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk) WRIO’s public profile says the company works on automating data transfers and workflows, which suggests the project may touch the kinds of back-office processes hotel groups use for ordering, transfers and exception handling. That linkage is an inference from WRIO’s stated capabilities and the project description, not a separately published project specification. (itea4.org) ### What happens next? Project Allegro is scheduled to run from May 2026 through December 2028, according to the ITEA project page. The next public milestones are likely to come through ITEA project materials, Innovate UK funded-project disclosures, or statements from named participants including WRIO, Operto Guest Technologies and Accor. (itea4.org 1) (itea4.org 2)