The Catalan AI that acts as a 'personal shopper'

BarcelonaA few years ago, personal shoppers, people who act as assistants for shopping, became fashionable. Now there is a Catalan start-up that has taken a step further. Do you need a person to accompany you shopping, or is it no longer necessary with artificial intelligence (AI) technology? The system exists and has already been launched experimentally in some shopping centers, and the first results are quite promising, if we are to believe the feedback from those who have used it.

This is Eleva AI, a start-up specialized in conversational AI for large physical spaces. The company has launched the pilot test of West, an AI virtual assistant deployed at Westfield La Maquinista, one of the largest shopping centers in Spain, with more than 16 million annual visits and over 200 brands. The West pilot test represents one of the first large-scale implementations of conversational AI in the physical retail sector in Europe.

Although it is in the pilot phase – with exclusive activation via QR codes and no associated marketing campaigns – the initial results already show a measurable impact on the visitor experience, commercial conversion, and data capture. Eleva AI plans to be present in more than 30 shopping centers before the end of 2026, with the main operator groups in the sector and initial international deployments already underway. In fact, in addition to La Maquinista, it has also been launched at La Roca Village, and the company is preparing deployments with Klépierre and other major operators in Spain and internationally.

West functions as an intelligent assistant specialized in the shopping center: it understands what visitors are looking for in natural language and in any language, recommends shops and restaurants, generates personalized routes with interactive 3D indoor maps, activates promotions, and answers questions about services – all in real-time and without the need to download any application. Visitors access West via QR codes distributed throughout the space. Eleva AI's platform integrates the indoor mapping technology of Mappedin, its technological partner, which has just closed a Series B funding round of $24.5 million led by Edison Partners, and which is one of the world's leading indoor mapping platforms.

Xavier Pin, CEO and co-founder of Eleva AI, indicates that “the future of physical retail will not be based on attracting more traffic, but on converting each visit into sales, data, and personalized experiences”. For Pin, by integrating artificial intelligence at the precise moment of the visitor's decision – within the shopping center, in real time –, the impact on conversion and data is immediate. Today, between 80% and 90% of shopping center visitors are completely anonymous. “With West, each interaction becomes an opportunity to understand what they are looking for, influence their shopping experience, and capture data that was previously lost”, he assures.

In fact, most shopping center visitors are not in any CRM, do not use the app, and do not participate in loyalty programs. Shopping centers receive millions of visits a year, but they do not have tools to understand what these visitors are looking for, influence their journey, or capture first-hand data about their behavior.

With AI, a commercial activation channel opens up for brands within the center. Retailers can launch segmented promotions, generate qualified traffic to their establishments, and measure the impact of their campaigns directly from the conversation. The shopping center thus becomes a conversational media platform for its own businesses.

According to its proponents, the impact is amplified in three dimensions: operational savings of 100 hours for every 1,000 managed conversations, an increase in the average ticket, and more conversion into sales thanks to the enrichment of the loyalty program. Added to this is a layer of commercial intent data that has been non-existent until now for the center – what visitors are looking for, which products interest them, what they ask, which routes they follow – which turns each conversation into actionable intelligence for the center's operation.

Tests at La Maquinista are already showing some results. Visitors show a satisfaction of 4.1 out of 5. Furthermore, 72% of conversations have a high commercial intent: searching for stores, interest in purchasing, offers, and route generation; and one in three conversations leads to a direct route to a store, with the assistant physically guiding the visitor until they arrive. Additionally, 78% of surveyed visitors state that the interaction influenced their purchase decision, and 20% of conversations generate a new user for the loyalty program.