Hotel technology tips

South Korean hospitality tech company Onda, announced on Thursday that it has raised $10 million in its Series-B funding round.

Before the pandemic hit, hotels had spent roughly 2.5 percent of revenue on new technologies. The size of that investment dropped during the pandemic.

A U.S. hotel tech company with equity backing has acquired a booking engine based in Ireland. 

Opinions vary widely about the state of investment in the travel tech startup world during this uncertain economic time, but one thing is for sure: it’s changing.

Several big-name hotel companies have entered 2023 with tech partnerships to modernize operations and services. 

Before the pandemic, the tech startup ResortPass had partnered with a little more than 100 hotels, offering a software platform that can book guests for day use of their amenities. 

India-headquartered travel tech firm RateGain Travel Technologies is acquiring Adara, a Silicon Valley-based firm in travel martech and predictive consumer intelligence. The cost: a mere $16.1 million, according to RateGain’s filing on the Indian stock market, which puts Adara, long troubled with management and competition issues for the last few years, out of its misery.

The relationship between the owners and operators of hotels has traditionally been fraught because the two sides often have goals and philosophies that don’t fully overlap. The pandemic forced operators to align closely with operators in a battle to survive the plunge in demand. Working closely together, ties between the two sides warmed up. The post-pandemic boom in demand has boosted moods, too.

Cendyn, a software company that offers customer relationship management, digital marketing, and operations tools to hotels, has hired a new chief executive. 

Keen to pursue its long-anticipated initial public offering (IPO), hospitality tech company Oyo has said it would be refiling its draft red herring prospectus with the Indian stock market regulator Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) by mid-February.

Indian online travel agency EaseMyTrip announced this week that it has acquired a 55 percent stake in hotel booking marketplace cheQin, owned by Gleego Innovations, for around $370,000.

Hotels have mixed feelings about business travel in 2023.

Travelers across the board want a future where technology makes payments easy and seamless. 

For InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), soaring hotel rates owing to a post-pandemic surge in pent-up demand for travel have been a boon after the pandemic bludgeoned the travel sector. But IHG Hotels & Resorts said its pricing power would last beyond the present moment thanks partly to its investments in digital technology. The company also anticipated future growth as China, the world’s second-largest economy, reopens.

Oyo, the India-based budget hotel chain and booking platform, plans to double its premium segment hotel count in Indonesia from around 200 properties to over 400 by the end of 2023.

Tek Travels, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Indian travel distribution platform TBO.com, has fully acquired BookaBed, a business-to-business (B2B) accommodation wholesaler for an undisclosed amount.

Amadeus has achieved its first year of profit since the pandemic. 

CIC Hospitality is opening 30 boutique Aiden by Best Western hotels in Scandinavia, but they won’t come with staff in the flesh and blood standing at the front desk. 

Adam Harris, the CEO of hotel management software company Cloudbeds, has a great no-nonsense grasp of the macro – and micro – environment in the startup fundraising world, a fact that I learned in a few back and forth LinkedIn messages and subsequent calls between us gossiping about the travel tech startups that were raising money or got sold for pennies on the dollar in the last few months.

The hotel industry finally wants to modernize the tech systems it uses to operate. And Oracle Hospitality — which has sold much of the older tech that’s still being used today — is focused on making that shift happen. 

Yanolja Cloud has acquired Innsoft, an Oregon-based provider of hotel management software, for $8.3 million.