Welcome to RemoteHotelier #81!
In today’s newsletter:
🚐 Choice Hotels pays $130M for a company with zero rooms
🔐 Why would hotels partner with a startup to store bags?
📊 Hilton's latest report says guests still trust your front desk
🤝 + 3 new deals
🆕 + 4 new product updates
💼 + 6 new jobs in the job board
🚐 Choice Hotels pays $130M for a company with zero rooms
Source: Harvest Hosts
Choice Hotels is buying Harvest Hosts, an RV travel membership company, in a deal worth around $130 million.
Harvest Hosts members pay an annual fee to park their RVs overnight at more than 11,200 wineries, farms, breweries, museums, and other local businesses.
Members don't pay a nightly fee, so the company doesn't sell a single room.
Choice says its loyalty members are overrepresented among RV owners, which makes the two audiences a natural fit.
Harvest Hosts keeps its brand, its CEO, and its team, and runs as a standalone business inside Choice.
Why would one of the biggest hotel companies in the world pay $130 million for a company with zero rooms? Because they’re buying a loyal community and recurring membership fees that don't depend on how many rooms it sells.
This isn't an isolated case of a hotel company buying/partnering with alternative hospitality companies: Marriott bought Postcard Cabins in late 2024 and built an outdoor collection around it with Trailborn. Hilton and Hyatt went with partnerships instead, AutoCamp and Under Canvas respectively, and Accor bought onefinestay back in 2016.
🔐 Why would hotels partner with a startup to store bags?
Stasher just raised about $4 million to install smart luggage lockers in hotels (among other locations), and they're already running at 17 Premier Inn properties in the UK.
Guests book and pay in the Stasher app, open a locker with a QR code, and nobody at the front desk touches a bag. The hotel provides the space and gets a share of the revenue. Which raises the obvious question: why partner with a middleman for something your front desk already does for free?
Stasher isn't really selling storage to your guests. It's renting your lobby space to people who need somewhere to drop a suitcase or backpack.
And if the lockers are in a good spot (somewhere they can see the bar, a vending machine, or a kiosk), some of those people might spend money they wouldn't spend otherwise.
According to them, their best performing location brings in about $3,300 a week from the lockers alone. That's remarkable for a corner that was probably just sitting there.
📢 Sponsored by Affixify
📋 The hardest part of buying hotel tech happens before the first demo
At first glance it might look like the White House, but that’s Mimslyn Inn
Mimslyn Inn, an independent boutique hotel, found its new channel manager through Affixify, a platform that matches hotels with tech vendors and then introduces them directly.
The inn was stuck with an enterprise distribution system from a soft brand relationship, and the cost and complexity didn't fit its size.
The hotel already had the PMS and RMS chosen, a cost target, and a list of must-haves.
The search pointed to a specific channel manager, a name they already knew and that integrated cleanly with the PMS in place.
Instead of demo requests and discovery calls, the introduction went straight to someone at that channel manager who could actually move the deal forward. In that way, they inverted the classic sales funnel.
RESOURCES
📍 Next Event: World Travel Market London (3–5 November).
📅 See the full hotel tech event calendar.
💼 Check which hotel tech companies offer remote jobs.
💻 Get your PMS comparison spreadsheet.
💸 Get your RMS comparison spreadsheet.
📊 Hilton's latest report says guests still trust your front desk
This week I’m sharing this resource I came across: Hilton released its 2027 Trends Report, based on a survey of more than 14,000 people across 14 countries. Some interesting numbers:
70% trust hotel staff as a source for planning their trip.
41% plan a solo trip next year, and for 92% of them it won't be their first.
67% like to experience a lot in a short amount of time, and 63% prefer staying somewhere central.
Any report with a company with such large data is always worth at least having a look. I hope it can give you a few good ideas.
DEALS
🤝 Dextr AI raises $6.7 million in seed funding: to build AI agents that handle hotel reservations, guest requests, and staff coordination. [Link]
They send engineers to set up each property, which is the human touch hotels really appreciate.
🤝 Hilton names Uber's Jeff Moore as its new chief technology officer: after leading 2,500 engineers behind Uber Eats and Uber for Business. [Link]
Bringing in someone from outside hospitality tells you Hilton wants to operate like a tech company.
🤝 Cloudbeds joins the Preferred Hotels & Resorts Alliance Partner Program: giving its more than 625 member hotels in over 80 countries access to the Cloudbeds platform. [Link]
PRODUCT UPDATES
🆕 Airbnb adds dynamic pricing for hosts in its Autumn Update: along with a calendar to change rates, availability, and policies across all their listings at once. [Link]
🆕 PriceLabs launches Athena, an AI revenue analyst: that reviews short-term rental listings on a schedule and emails recommendations that only apply once the user approves them. [Link]
🆕 Blastness launches BlastnessPay: to automate hotel payments from booking to reconciliation, including deposits, refunds, and OTA virtual cards. [Link]
If you ever had to chase an expired virtual card during night audit, you’d appreciate this.
🆕 Bartech launches a smart minibar for vacation rentals: where guests scan a QR code, pay for everything inside, and the door unlocks, with hosts paying a $9.99 monthly subscription. [Link]
I guess that ends the awkward interaction for when the front office has to ask the guest if they used the minibar.
JOB BOARD
HOTELS
💼 Operational Performance Lead, Franchise Full-Service | Remote (based in the UK) | Hyatt.
💼 Senior Manager, Global Property Management Systems | Remote (based in the US) | Marriott International.
💼 Senior Manager, Strategic Operations - Technology Strategy & Roadmap | Remote (based in the US) | Hilton.
TECH
💼 Digital Marketing Manager | Remote (based in the UK) | Duetto.
💼 Kiosk Implementation Specialist | Remote (based in the UK) | Canary Technologies.
💼 Senior Project Manager - Business Operations | Remote (based in Spain) | Lighthouse.
That’s all for today, thank you for reading. If this was helpful, share it with someone who'd find it useful too:
See you next week!
Jose