Acquisition offers in hotel tech rarely arrive on your timetable. They come from a partner you have integrated with for years, a larger platform filling a gap, or a private equity owned rival buying a competitor. The founders who get good terms are usually not the ones with the best product. They are the ones who could answer the buyer's questions in days rather than months.

This checklist sets out what to have ready before the email arrives. It draws on real hotel tech deals and on the diligence lists published by Software Equity Group (SEG), an M&A adviser to software companies. Tick each item honestly, then use the score bands at the end.

What recent hotel tech deals tell you

Start with what buyers actually said they wanted. In August 2024 Agilysys acquired Book4Time, the spa management SaaS company, in an all-cash transaction that closed for approximately $150 million. The announcement highlighted Book4Time's integrations with more than 60 technology providers, its remote implementation model and a customer base with minimal property overlap with Agilysys, which meant room to sell more products to each.

In November 2024 Mews acquired Atomize, the Swedish revenue management company. Mews' CEO noted that Atomize had been one of its key strategic partners since 2018. Earlier that year, in January 2024, IBS Software agreed to acquire APS for $90 million to add CRS, PMS and RMS capabilities to a booking engine and distribution platform used by over 36,000 hotels.

Most recently, in October 2026, Duetto, which Skift reports is owned by private equity firm GrowthCurve Capital, bought FLYR Hospitality, the hotel pricing unit that FLYR built after buying Pace Revenue in 2022. Neither side disclosed the price. Duetto's CEO told Hotel Management that it acquired the business "for what its technology and talented team can do". We looked at what that deal means for vendors in our Duetto and FLYR breakdown.

The common thread: buyers paid for things that were already proven in the market. Integrations that work, partnerships that have run for years, a customer base that fits theirs. None of that can be built during a diligence window.

The wider market is busy. SEG's 2026 Annual SaaS Report counted 2,698 SaaS M&A transactions in 2025, the highest on record and up 28% from 2,107 in 2024. It says private equity buyers were involved in nearly 58% of deals, and that buyers reward durable growth and retention plus products deeply embedded in workflows and data.

SEG's index also shows how fast sentiment moves. The median EV to revenue multiple for vertically focused public SaaS companies fell from 6.0x in the fourth quarter of 2024 to 4.6x in the fourth quarter of 2025. Those are public company figures, not private deal prices, but the lesson holds. You cannot choose the market you sell into. You can control how quickly you answer a buyer's questions and how few surprises they find.

The acquisition readiness checklist

1. Revenue quality

• [ ] ARR split cleanly into subscription, implementation and transaction or usage revenue, reconciled to your accounts.

• [ ] Gross and net revenue retention by cohort and by segment, using the definitions in our NRR guide.

• [ ] A billing register for the past three years, which SEG's due diligence checklist lists as a standard accounting request.

• [ ] Revenue from your top five customers as a share of the total, with copies of those contracts ready.

• [ ] An honest list of at-risk customers, which SEG names among its priority requests.

• [ ] Receivables ageing, with any balances over 90 days explained.

2. Contracts and change of control

• [ ] Every customer contract in one place, with term, renewal date, price and notice period recorded.

• [ ] A list of contracts with change of ownership or assignment clauses, including hotel group master agreements.

• [ ] Supplier and hosting contracts reviewed for the same clauses, as SEG's supplier checklist asks.

• [ ] Reseller, referral and PMS partner agreements, with what happens to each if you are sold.

• [ ] Signed data processing agreements for customers holding guest data.

3. Product, integrations and IP

• [ ] A current integrations list with the partner, the owner on your side and the number of live properties on each.

• [ ] Signed IP assignment from every employee and contractor who wrote code. SEG warns that without proof of IP ownership, diligence is likely to fail.

• [ ] An inventory of open source and third-party components.

• [ ] Uptime history, disaster recovery documentation and recovery time objectives.

• [ ] Security evidence such as a SOC 2 report or a dated plan, covered in should hotel software get SOC 2.

4. The go-to-market machine

• [ ] Pipeline history, pricing books, average selling price and historical sales productivity, all of which SEG lists under sales and marketing diligence.

• [ ] A CRM a stranger can read, built along the lines of our CRM setup for hotel tech companies.

• [ ] Forecast accuracy for the last four quarters, or a plan to fix the issues in signs your forecast cannot be trusted.

• [ ] Customer acquisition cost and payback by segment.

• [ ] Support volumes and resolution times by month.

5. Team and story

• [ ] A list of people the business depends on, and what happens if each leaves.

• [ ] A one-page answer to: why would this buyer pay more for us than anyone else?

• [ ] A map of overlap and cross-sell between your customers and the likeliest buyers' customers.

• [ ] A record of partnerships with likely acquirers, including joint customers and how long you have worked together.

• [ ] A view on what you want: full exit, rollover equity, or staying to run the product.

Score yourself

There are 26 items above. Count the ones you could produce within a week.

When the email arrives

1. Reply warmly and briefly, and share no numbers before a non-disclosure agreement is signed.

2. Ask what the buyer is trying to achieve and why now.

3. Speak to an M&A adviser and a lawyer who have done software deals before the first detailed call.

4. Map your alternatives, including other buyers and the plan if you do not sell.

5. Plan how you will tell customers, using the approach in our post on software ownership changes.

Most of this checklist is simply good operating discipline. A company that knows its retention, owns its code and runs a clean pipeline is worth more whether it sells or not. That is the same system the hotel tech GTM strategy guide describes.

If the go-to-market section is where you scored lowest, a free GTM leak audit will show which numbers a buyer would question first.

Frequently Asked Questions