"Is our churn normal?" is one of the most common questions hotel tech founders ask, usually after a board meeting or a bad quarter. The honest answer is that most vendors cannot tell yet, because they measure churn in a way no benchmark can be compared with. This self-assessment fixes that first, then gives you public reference points to compare against.

Answer the ten questions below, score each one 0, 1 or 2, and add up your total. The score bands at the end tell you whether your churn is normal, whether you just do not know yet, or whether you have a retention problem to fix.

First, three definitions you need

Monthly revenue churn is the recurring revenue lost from customers who cancel in a month, as a percentage of recurring revenue at the start of that month. That is close to word for word how SiteMinder defines it in its FY25 investor presentation, which also defines monthly net revenue churn as churned revenue minus upgrades from existing subscribers.

Gross revenue retention (GRR) is the revenue you keep from last year's customers with no upsell, so it cannot exceed 100%. Net revenue retention (NRR) adds expansion, cross-sell and price increases. SaaS Capital describes churn as one minus gross retention: 95% gross retention equals 5% churn.

Monthly versus annual: compound, do not multiply. A steady 1% monthly revenue churn leaves 0.99 to the power of 12, about 88.6%, of starting revenue after a year. That is roughly 11.4% annual churn, not 12%.

The public reference points

Hotel tech vendors rarely publish churn. SiteMinder, listed on the ASX, does. Its FY25 presentation shows monthly revenue churn of 1.0% in FY23, FY24 and FY25, across 50.1k properties at the end of FY25 with a monthly ARPU of A$405. That is one vendor with its own product mix and customer base, from Little Hotelier's small properties to the larger hotels SiteMinder says it targeted in FY25, so treat it as a reference point rather than a target.

For wider SaaS comparison, two data sets are widely used, and they disagree for good reasons:

SaaS Capital argues that contract value is the best starting point for benchmarking, more than age, revenue or industry, because companies at a similar price sell and support customers in similar ways. ChartMogul makes the same point about average revenue per account. A vendor selling a $300 a month tool to independents should not compare itself with an enterprise PMS on five-year contracts.

SiteMinder's published churn, the SaaS Capital and ChartMogul retention benchmarks, and what your self-assessment score means, on one page. Free to share with a link back to this post.

The self-assessment: ten questions

Score each question 0, 1 or 2. Be strict: if you have to go and check, score it as if the answer is no.

1. Do you have one written churn definition that finance, sales and customer success all use?

0: no, each team quotes a different number. 1: one definition, but not written down. 2: written, with the formula, like SiteMinder's published glossary.

2. Do you report revenue churn and property churn separately?

Losing ten small guesthouses and losing one 300-room hotel are different problems. Recurly's July 2026 benchmark page notes that a business with 3% customer churn could have 5% revenue churn if the accounts lost are above average in value. 0: one blended number. 1: both exist but are rarely compared. 2: both reported every month.

3. Do you separate voluntary churn from failed payments?

Recurly defines involuntary churn as losing a subscriber because a payment fails, which says nothing about intent to stay. For vendors billing small hotels by card, this can be a meaningful share of losses and is fixed by billing operations, not customer success. 0: no. 1: sometimes. 2: tracked monthly with a recovery process.

4. Do you tag why each hotel left?

At minimum: switched to a competitor, closed or sold, consolidated by a group, budget, or never went live. Ownership changes are common in hospitality, and our post on what happens when hotels change ownership covers that risk. 0: no reasons recorded. 1: free-text notes. 2: a fixed reason list, reviewed monthly.

5. Do you measure churn over twelve months as well as monthly?

ChartMogul notes that analysing retention over 12 months nullifies seasonality, which matters for seasonal resorts that pause or close for part of the year. 0: only month by month. 1: annual figure calculated once a year. 2: rolling 12-month GRR and NRR every month.

6. Is your monthly revenue churn at or below SiteMinder's 1.0%?

0: above 2%, or you do not know. 1: between 1% and 2%. 2: 1% or below, measured the same way.

7. Where does your NRR sit against the benchmark for your price point?

Use SaaS Capital's band for your contract value, or ChartMogul's for your ARPA. 0: below the median, or not measured. 1: between the median and the top quartile. 2: at or above the top quartile.

8. Do you know churn by customer age?

Churn in the first year usually has different causes from churn in year four. If most losses come before go-live or in the first months, read why hotel tech churn is often an onboarding problem. 0: no cohort view. 1: first year versus the rest. 2: full cohort table by start quarter.

9. Do you know churn by segment?

Independents, groups, management companies and regions behave differently. 0: no. 1: one cut, usually region. 2: segment and region, reviewed quarterly.

10. Do you see churn coming at least 90 days before renewal?

0: you hear when the cancellation arrives. 1: some accounts are flagged. 2: a health score with named owners, like the one in our guide to customer health scores for hotel properties.

Your score

Why this matters for growth

SaaS Capital's 2026 growth benchmarks, drawn from more than 1,000 private B2B SaaS companies, found median growth of 22% and that moving NRR from the 90% to 100% range into the 100% to 110% range improves growth by 5 percentage points. ChartMogul's billing report found annual plans drive stronger retention across all price points, which is worth reading alongside our post on annual or monthly contracts for hotel software.

Churn is the retain stage of the hotel tech GTM system, and it is usually a symptom of a leak further up: the wrong segment sold, a slow go-live, or a promise the product cannot keep. The churn signals hotel software vendors miss are a good next read.

If you scored under 15, our free GTM leak audit will help you find which stage of your funnel is feeding the churn, so you fix the cause rather than the cancellation.

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