What types of hotel tech services are there?
The Hotel Tech Index has 32 different types of tools and platforms, showing just how much the hospitality automation industry has flourished in recent years, even as certain hotel technology trends have come and gone.
Some of the most-used and important types of hospitality technology companies include:
- Property management software (PMS): An essential, central foundation on which all other operations are built, enhancing guest experiences through automation and seamless information flow, to save hours on daily tasks, improving management and staff efficiency.
- Online travel agents (OTAs): Love or hate them, OTAs are still the biggest source of hospitality bookings and dominate the industry. Older platforms inspire trust and brand loyalty, and newer sites capture younger clients via seamless app technology.
- Channel management: Crucial platforms to maximize visibility across channels and OTAs, offering centralized solutions for managing inventory, availability, and bookings, across platforms. They allow hotels and property managers to avoid double bookings, sync calendars to enhance operations, and target niche guests.
- Access and digital keys: Revolutionize check-in with digital key hospitality tech, allowing guests to access their room or property via contactless systems, mobile keys, and apps. This improves security, streamlines check-in, reduces the risk of delays, and saves staff time.
- Guest screening and identity verification: Enhance security and prevent financial losses with AI-powered screening tools. They automate the guest booking journey, verify information, and streamline check-in by syncing with PMS systems to eliminate clunky paper documentation.
- Housekeeping and cleaning software: Make the coordination of daily cleaning and turnarounds much easier, providing real-time task assigning, syncing with the central PMS calendar for up-to-date scheduling, tracking, and communication; for clean rooms, on time, every time.
- Digital guidebooks: Reduce time spent on repetitive guest communication by giving the guest all the necessary information and answers to common questions — such as check-in and check-out times, things to do, etc — in one, easy-to-access digital hospitality platform, app, or page.
- Food and beverage tech: Improve the guest experience by making ordering more convenient and easy. This enables hoteliers to boost revenue, inspire return customers, and gather guest data to better cater to guest behavior and needs, for increased spend and upsells.
- Guest experience platforms: Offer seamless communication and service ordering via guest smartphones or in-room tablets These tools help improve the guest experience and meet high guest expectations, which increasingly include tech-enabled and personalized stays.
- Guest communication and messages: Cut down on repetitive, time-consuming guest inquiries by automating responses and centralizing communications This ensures all messages are promptly addressed and directed to the right team, even if staff are busy or asleep.
- Direct booking websites: Increasing direct bookings via your own website is crucial for successful growth, with increased numbers of platforms offering personalized sites that reduce OTA fees, build guest trust, and boost bookings by targeting specific guest preferences.
- Dynamic pricing and revenue management: Platforms using advanced machine learning, market analysis, and the increased power of AI in hospitality to forecast demand, adjust room rates dynamically, and make confident pricing decisions With their help, hoteliers and property managers can maximize revenue and occupancy.
- Payment processing: Manage online and in-person payments efficiently, with tools that offer secure gateways, global transaction handling, and dynamic currency conversion. This ensures convenience and peace of mind for guests and streamlined processes for staff.
- In-room IoT (Internet of Things) controls: Advanced in-room controls that connect guest room devices, improve convenience, and reduce energy costs while offering intuitive IoT hospitality control options that enable guests to optimize their room comfort.
- Smart thermostats, sensors, and alarms: Smart hotel technology that reduces properties’ carbon footprint by automatically adjusting temperature. It monitors and addresses issues such as unauthorized smoking, noise, and system malfunctions in real time to protect properties and ensure guest safety and comfort.
Hospitality tech companies: Property management software
Property management systems (PMSs) are increasingly indispensable for any modern hospitality business. As the nerve center and source of truth for all operations, they enable managers to automate processes, lower their workload and costs, improve the guest experience, and maximize revenue.
Here are three of the best hotel PMSs on the market today:
1. Apaleo
The Apaleo PMS stands out for its ability to integrate with 200+ apps and its easy, rapid set-up. Cloud-based, it prides itself on being lean and never charging users for features they don’t need or use.
It’s adaptable for hotels, rentals, long stays, rooms, parking, and more. It includes accounting tools and payment portals as well as a unified view of all properties and reservations. Apaleo also has its own API, allowing companies to connect their own apps, making it even more flexible.
2. eviivo
With a whole suite of products, eviivo offers a Property Management System designed especially for hotels, B&Bs, and vacation rentals. It aims to be simple but powerful and adaptable, with a straightforward online booking planner that works on any device, mobile or desktop.
Its hospitality software features enable at-a-glance calendar checking; streamlined check-in and check-outs; OTA and cross-channel synchronization; deposit and damage waiver management; card payment coordination; and personalized, automated guest messaging, for fast, efficient operations and reduced paperwork.
3. RMS Cloud
Designed to replace the traditional front desk, the hospitality technology system RMS Cloud centralizes improved operations across guest management, OTAs and channel coordination, housekeeping, and revenue. As a cloud-based system with more than a decade of experience in the sector, it’s highly reliable but still has an easy-to-use, modern UI.
It includes an in-built channel manager, hundreds of integrations and software partners, a proprietary payment solution, and the option to connect to your direct booking portal and guest experience tool, for a lean tech stack that facilitates rather than overcomplicates operations.
Hospitality operations often resemble a swan; serene on the surface, with desperate paddling underneath. Tools that simplify and streamline the ‘behind the scenes’ are worth their weight in gold.
4. Operto
Operto Guest Technologies promises to help property managers and hoteliers maximize the potential of their business, with automation tools and proprietary mobile-friendly portals designed to improve the guest experience while making day-to-day operations far easier.
Operto is customizable to each brand and its needs, with automation tools for dynamic staff scheduling, laundry forecasting, maintenance tracking, cleaning checklists, and smart access via unique keycodes for both staff and guests. It streamlines workflows, saves costs, and creates insightful business reports
It’s also the proud winner of prestigious industry awards and respected review websites — including GetApp, the Shortyz, Travel Tech, SourceForge, and Capterra.
5. Beekeeper
As its name suggests, Beekeeper is built on the idea of a “hive” mind. It specializes in offering hospitality company staff an effective, professional, app-based way to communicate.
Beekeeper enables real-time group chats, direct messaging, the sharing of company news and events, recognition for employees, and two-way communication to avoid a top-down approach and instead foster a sense of workplace community and respectful culture.
This boosts productivity and reduces staff turnover, building long-term commitment, more experienced workers, and improved teamwork — all of which leads to happier guests and customers, as a more engaged team will work harder to provide (and be more effective in offering) excellent guest service.
6. Optii
Like many other hotel platforms, Optii has tools for housekeeping, maintenance, and service. But unlike many other platforms, it uses the power of AI and predictive technology to do it.
This means that this hotel innovation tool learns from your previous business patterns, and adapts to your hotel’s labor needs, including cleaning and turnover sequences, and predicted task lists based on your bookings calendar. It also offers deep data insights to help you make more cost-efficient decisions, by estimating maintenance needs and costs, as well as predicting team changes and scheduling needs. This saves time, money, and stress.
Optii also offers a team chat feature, to promote staff engagement and team coordination, even automatically removing language barriers, to reduce the risk of communication errors and make cross-department cooperation easier.
7. Flexkeeping
Flexkeeping specializes in centralizing and streamlining hotel housekeeping and staff management, bringing previously scattered operations into a clear, easy-to-use, visually-organized dashboard.
Its software focuses on improving staff communication, to solve problems and communicate real-time progress fast; housekeeping tracking to boost productivity and enable more dynamic turnarounds; and maintenance, to ensure repairs and regular checks are carried out promptly.
With color-coded visual blocks, and integrations with major PMSs and other tools, Flexkeeping claims its clients save one hour per room per month in housekeeping time, receive 80% fewer guest complaint phone calls and questions, and see a 350% increase in maintenance reports (for more maintenance overall, better-quality properties, and happier guests).
Hospitality SaaS companies: Marketing and distribution software
Regular guests are the backbone of your business. That’s why marketing and distribution software is so crucial. It’s the only way to make sure your hotel or property management business gets in front of your ideal, paying guests.
8. SiteMinder
SiteMinder helps its hotels book more than 100 million reservations every year, and among its many features are its booking engine, channel manager, distribution system, and website builder, all designed to convert hotel searchers into happy guests.
Ranked the Best Booking Engine by HotelTechAwards in 2024, SiteMinder’s engine helps hotel managers maximize revenue, reduce OTA fees, automate guest communications, and build trust with guests, by owning their journey without a middleman making communication more difficult.
Combined with its hotel website design builder (also ranked Best Website Design and CMS at the 2024 HotelTechAwards), SiteMinder provides a powerful platform to attract bookings from multiple sources, boost revenue, build good relationships with guests, and offer a streamlined and easy booking journey.
9. NextPax
As one of the most established channel managers on the market (with expertise dating back to 2006), NextPax aims to help hospitality businesses drive bookings while offering flexibility on pricing — with no monthly fees — to accommodate smaller budgets.
Its channel distribution system helps ensure ideal guests see your listings, enabling hotels (and accommodation property managers) to distribute their properties across a variety of channels and booking partners; Its booking engine seeks to streamline reservations while offering a user-friendly system for hoteliers, including mobile compatibility, and improved communication.
NextPax also prides itself on 24/7 support, and personalized packages designed to work for any kind of accommodation or hotel business needs.
10. Otamiser
If your business relies on OTAs (as up to two-thirds do in the US), Otamiser is an ideal tool that claims big results.
Through its ranking management algorithm, AI-driven autorank tool, and revenue management dashboard, it promises businesses 24% more revenue through higher OTA rankings, a huge 480% increase in views of your properties on results pages, and a 150% increase in average views on your listings.
According to Otamiser, this translates to a 21% increase in ADR (average daily rate) and an 11% increase in occupancy. Overall, it aims to provide higher revenue, visibility, and brand trust for your business — whether you run an independent hotel, a chain, or property rentals.
11. SHR
SHR is focused squarely on larger hotels and casinos, aiming to offer them the latest tools in hospitality technology to ensure they stay competitive, with high revenue and the greatest lifetime revenue per guest.
It combines the power of AI with a range of automations, and in-demand features like a booking engine, revenue management, customer relationship management, digital marketing, and website design.
One of SHR’s clients, the Cheval Collection — which runs 13 luxury apartments in London, Edinburgh, and Dubai — said using SHR helped it increase revenue by 82% as a result of the platform’s digital expertise, which helped it develop a new website and develop a successful digital strategy to maximize bookings.
SHR also has a clutch of industry awards, including Best Digital Marketing and Best Metasearch Management Software at the 2024 HotelTechAwards.
They say the customer is king — but as all hoteliers know, guests alone don’t make your business a success. Instead, happy guests are the holy grail, and using automation technology to improve all parts of the guest journey is the best way to achieve this.
12. Like Magic
As its name suggests, Like Magic aims to provide a smooth, seamless experience for guests that makes their stay feel easy, convenient, stress-free, and — well — magical. Not only that, but it helps Increase efficiency and drive revenue too — because happier guests mean loyal customers, higher revenue, and better reviews.
Its features cover everything along the customer journey and hotel operations, from the PMS, distribution, guest messaging, and digital keys, to smart home tools; offering a digital journey that streamlines the entire hotel booking process for managers, staff, and guests.
It also gathers insightful data on guest behavior and preferences, so you can make data-driven decisions that will wow guests with stays tailored to their needs and likes, transforming them from one-time bookers into loyal fans and repeat customers.
13. Stay
Guests already use their smartphones for everything, so it makes sense that they would want and expect to use their devices for their hotel experience too. That’s where Stay comes in.
It offers guests access to all hotel services from their smartphones — including bookings for restaurants, spa treatments, tours, classes, day trips, transfers, or extras such as late checkout — via a customizable, well-designed interface that builds brand identity and customer trust.
And yet, it’s not only guest-facing; it also enables staff to use their devices for guest requests and needs too, including overseeing restaurant orders, guest questions, and real-time service information and updates.
Staff can also see immediate feedback so they can improve their service instantly, and managers can make better decisions about how to better cater to guest needs and desires through automatically gathered analytics and insights.
14. Duve
Duve is one of the industry’s best-known guest experience platforms, and promises increased guest satisfaction, revenue growth, and digitization of operations — the trifecta of modern hotel success.
Duve states that its hotel solution saves 18 minutes per reservation, by eliminating repetitive work and freeing up staff to be more useful elsewhere; offers $60 extra revenue per bed per month in upsells alone; and increases online check-in to a ratio of 73%, reducing queues and waiting times at reception, for a better first impression and happier guests.
Entirely smartphone-based, Duve offers guests a complete hospitality solution in the palm of their hand (from check-in info to upsells to answers to common questions) while also working efficiently behind the scenes to help hotels gather data and guest preferences, to help them make data-driven decisions and offer tailored, exceptional service.
15. Enso Connect
Enso Connect helps hoteliers digitize and monetize guest interactions, making them smoother, more efficient, and more cost-effective — all fueled by the increased power of AI.
Its features include upsell offers (such as restaurants available to book, Uber cars to call, or sports equipment to hire), an online check-in portal, and a digital welcome book with common questions. With Enso Connect, hotels can automate operations (saving on staff and costs), and minimize response times to guests, providing prompt and useful service that will impress.
Powerful features make managing guest comms a breeze, including a unified inbox that uses AI to sort through messages; and automated workflows to simplify set-up.
Hotels with more than 50 rooms (or property managers with more than 50 units) could even generate €100,000 in extra revenue in one year, simply by implementing the Enso Connect web app, it claims, showing that improving the guest experience doesn’t only sound good; it’s good for business, too.
Keyless entry providers
Gone are the days of awkward key handovers, long lines at the front desk, worries in case of travel delays, guest frustration at malfunctioning locks, security risks from lost keys, or the environmental and financial cost of replacing lost cards.
With research showing that keyless entry boosts guest satisfaction by 7%, almost half (46%) of travelers saying that a mobile key is important, and satisfaction scores dropping by 50% after just a five-minute wait at check-in, offering keyless entry in hotels has never been more crucial.
16. OpenKey
While some hospitality apps could be seen as overcomplicated, OpenKey stands out for its straightforwardness and simplicity, focusing purely on the best way to help hotels implement smartphone digital keys.
Its many automations make setting up and using digital keys easy, with mobile key access sent to guests automatically using details saved in the PMS, which updates seamlessly if room details or departure dates change.
OpenKey promises to reduce hotel costs, improve security, speed up check-in and check-out, provide deeper insights into guest behavior, and boost their stay satisfaction.
Maximizing revenue is key to a successful business, but choosing the best rates while remaining competitive is a full-time job. Instead, modern revenue management and dynamic pricing tools can analyze billions of data points to do the hard work for you, and get the best price every night.
17. Beyond
One of hospitality’s best-known dynamic pricing platforms, Beyond offers industry-leading automations to help hotels set the right prices, no matter how much demand fluctuates, or competition rises.
With its constantly-tuning algorithm, it tweaks rates consistently based on insights from different markets, seasons, and local events; and claims to be the only revenue management tool to incorporate real-time consumer demand data into its pricing results.
Hoteliers can increase revenue by an average of 40% by using Beyond, and achieve much more finely-tuned, competitive rates than even a super-experienced team of human revenue managers ever could.
Beyond can even push revenue changes automatically to your listings, and identify where would-be guests are dropping off in their booking journey, making it even easier for your hotel business to remain competitive and secure conversions no matter when your guests check the latest prices.
18. IDeaS
Hotel companies seeking rapid revenue growth need look no further than IDeaS, whose revenue management platform combines automated pricing with data analysis designed to drive intelligent inventory decisions so managers can maximize the potential of all their hotel spaces.
With solutions for hotel rooms, meeting spaces, event options, and even parking, IDeaS can help keep your business competitive while maximizing and expanding revenue streams.
It also promises to go further than a simple tech platform and work with its users as a partner, helping to enhance productivity, and even has performance advisors who can offer tailored advice and solutions that will most suit your business and hotel goals.
Payment processing solutions
From once being eyed with suspicion, to now being the normal way to pay, online payment processing solutions have exploded in recent years, and hotel guests now expect to be able to settle up digitally.
19. Canary Technologies
An expansive platform that offers a suite of guest management services, Canary Technologies appears a natural choice for hoteliers looking for a payment processing tool designed with them in mind.
Its features focus on protecting hotels from scams (with digital authorizations to avoid chargebacks); making documentation and management easier (with digital contracts and e-signing tools); and ensuring the safe handling of sensitive data.
As the company itself states: “It’s time to upgrade from dusty storage boxes and paper-filled binders.” Instead, it offers a secure, cloud-based platform that keeps data safe, reduces fraud, protects income, and gives hotel managers (and guests) financial peace of mind.
Upsells can be an easily overlooked but potent source of extra revenue for hotels, offering guests extra perks and services that can significantly streamline their experience.
20. Oaky
You could argue that the perfect upsell is one that guests don’t even notice because they’re too busy being grateful for the extra service, and happily paying for that something extra that improves their stay.
And yet, Oaky’s strapline is “From unnoticed to WOW”, in a nod to its “hyper-personalized” software, which tailors upsells to the room, guest, occasion, and experience, for optimum selling success and happier guests.
Highly customizable, Oaky can offer everything from room upgrades to extended stays, late checkouts and breakfasts, extra guests (including of the four-legged variety), and pre-check-in options such as private airport transfers, parking, and welcome drinks on arrival.
Plus, its software’s robust back-end offers managers deep insights, an understanding of guest behavior, and revenue reporting all within a simple-to-use dashboard.
With tailored welcome screens and automated messages sent at the right time, to an app interface branded to your hotel for added guest trust, Oaky is a leading example of an upsell platform that goes beyond simple extras to real upgrades and improvements that guests will love.
Hospitality tech companies: FAQs
What are some of the latest trends in hospitality tech?
Personalization, digital controls, and better service through AI are just some of the latest trends in hospitality tech, boosting revenue by pleasing guests and enabling them to customize their stay. Digital tech platforms enable smart hotel rooms, elevated guest experience tools, and deep data analysis.
What are the hottest hospitality startups to watch in 2025?
The 2024 Abode Hotel Tech Index identified five brands as some of the most important companies to watch in today’s industry. These were operations and guest experience tool Like Magic, guest services and concierge platform Triparound, global business management software The Access Group, guest experience app Stay, and OTA ranking specialist Otamiser.
What are the benefits of hospitality technology services for hotels?
Hospitality technology services offer endless benefits, including helping hotels save costs and boost revenue, increase staff efficiency, reduce repetitive tasks, and boost future bookings by pleasing guests and enabling them to tailor their stay via their smartphones. For example, guest experience platforms impress guests, operational tools simplify cleaning and maintenance, and algorithmic platforms boost your place on OTA results and pinpoint the most competitive rates, for higher revenue.
