Today, 14 October, the Travel Technology Association holds its Start-Up Summit in Washington DC. Ahead of it, Hotel Online published what speakers, investors and judges see as the six biggest threats to travel startups in 2027. The list was written for the whole travel sector. Almost every point on it applies to companies selling software to hotels, often more sharply.

Here are the six, what each means if your buyer is a hotel, and what I would do about it.

1. Obsolescence at the hands of big AI

The single biggest threat to travel tech startups is obsolescence. Will they be relevant market players in two or three years? (Gilad Berenstein, Brook Bay Capital)

Berenstein pointed to Meta's new assistant, Muse, which claims to do what travel-specific AI assistants and trip planners do. For hotel tech the risk is narrower but real. If your product is a thin layer of AI on top of data the hotel already has, a general assistant connected to that data can do the same job for free.

What it means for hotel tech: the defensible part of your product is rarely the model. It is the workflow, the integrations, the hotel data you hold and the trust you have built with operators. Sell those, and stop leading with AI as the reason to buy.

2. The customer acquisition funnel has broken up

The traditional customer acquisition funnel doesn't exist anymore. Search, social, AI assistants, brand sites, in-person events and creators all compete for the buyer's attention. (Jared Alster, Dune7)

This is the one I see most often in hotel tech. A general manager hears about you from a peer, checks a review site, asks an AI assistant, glances at your LinkedIn and then meets you at a trade show. No single channel gets the credit, and most companies keep investing only in the one they can measure. Shortlists are often formed before you are in the conversation, as covered in why hotel tech review sites decide deals before you hear about them.

What it means for hotel tech: pick the three or four places your buyers actually look and be present in all of them with the same story. Ask every new customer how they found you, in their words, and write it down. That record is worth more than attribution software at this stage.

3. Investors want revenue, not demos

In travel tech, a good story gets you in the room, but revenue commands the room. (Chris Joyce, Gusher)

Joyce's advice was to stop relying on venture money, charge early and prove unit economics from day one. In hotel tech, the usual way to avoid charging is the long free pilot or the open-ended trial. Both feel like progress and both delay the moment you find out whether the product is worth paying for. I wrote about this in why hotel tech pilots rarely turn into contracts.

What it means for hotel tech: know your cost to win a property, your payback period and your churn by segment before your next raise. If you cannot work those out, that is the first thing to fix, ahead of the pitch deck. The order matters, as set out in should you fix GTM before or after your next raise.

4. Corporate buyers will not bet on the unproven

It's not enough to have a great product. Providers have to show a clear ROI (4:1 or more). (Steve Reynolds, CorpTravelTech)

Reynolds was talking about corporate travel, but hotel groups and management companies buy the same way. Procurement, an owner's asset manager and a regional director all want to see a return they can check before they sign. Reynolds also made a useful point: once you clear that bar, marketing gets cheaper, because only a few events and publications really matter to these buyers.

What it means for hotel tech: write the return down in the buyer's numbers: rooms, ADR, labour hours, commission. Hand them a business case they can forward to the person who signs, built the way an owner reads it, as in how to write a business case a hotel owner will approve.

5. Industry silos split the trip apart

The silos in the industry often treat each element of a trip as a completely different transaction. (Eric Bailey, Purposeful Travel Solutions)

Hotels live inside these silos. Rooms, F&B, spa, events and parking often sit in different systems, and guest data is spread across all of them. Bailey called consolidating that data both one of the biggest challenges and one of the biggest opportunities in travel tech.

What it means for hotel tech: if your product joins data that hotels currently keep apart, say so plainly, because that is a reason to buy. If it adds one more silo, expect the hotel to ask how it connects before anything else.

6. Old infrastructure meets new AI

The challenge in 2027 is to innovate boldly while working with the realities of both worlds, and to build privacy, AI, and pricing compliance in from day one. (Li Reilly, Biztech Lawyers and Travel Tech Association)

Most hotels still run on a PMS that is ten years old or more, connected through interfaces that were not designed for real-time AI. New products have to work with that, not around it. Compliance matters too: guest data, rate parity and pricing rules differ by market, and a hotel group will ask about them in procurement.

What it means for hotel tech: treat integration and compliance as features you sell, with a clear page for each. Buyers who have been burned by a failed integration will look for it first.

What ties the six together

Read the list again and only one of the six is really about technology. The rest are about distribution, proof and fit: how buyers find you, whether you can show a return and whether you work with what they already run. That is go-to-market, and it is where most hotel tech companies I meet are losing revenue without seeing it.

If you want to know which of these six is costing your company the most, start with a free revenue leak audit. It looks at where your pipeline is leaking, from first touch to signed contract, and which fix will recover the most revenue first.

Frequently Asked Questions