Welcome to RemoteHotelier!
In today’s newsletter:
🚨 Booking.com confirms hackers stole customer data
🤔 Is Amazon Leo a real alternative to Starlink for hotels?
👀 Drama in the PMS world: Cloudbeds vs. Mews
📊 The 2026 HotelTech salary report is out
🐕 My Place Hotels turns pet fees into loyalty points
💰 Hotel tech just crossed $1 billion in funding
🚀 + 5 new product updates
💼 + 3 new jobs in hotel tech
MAIN NEWS
#1 Booking.com confirms hackers stole customer data
Booking.com confirms hackers accessed customer data, including names, emails, phone numbers, and booking details. And if that's not enough, some of those customers are already receiving phishing messages on WhatsApp using the stolen information.
If Booking.com, a company with more security resources than most hotel chains combined, can get hit like this, smaller properties are in a much more vulnerable spot. You don't need a big budget to reduce the risk, these are some of the low effort actions/habits you can adopt today to prevent cyber attacks:
Don't reuse passwords across platforms.
Turn on multi-factor authentication wherever you can.
Stop storing all your credentials in a file that anyone with access to the front desk computer can open (or at least hide it better… I’m looking at you “PASSWORDS.xlsx“ 🫵).
#2 Is Amazon Leo a real alternative to Starlink for hotels?
Amazon Leo just released a new antenna capable of delivering high-speed internet for a full aircraft. And this was worth mentioning for two reasons:
Leo is positioning itself as a serious competitor to Starlink for satellite connectivity. Competition in this space is good news for properties in rural and remote locations.
It’s always great to remember the time when Ryanair's CEO Michael O'Leary called Elon Musk an idiot for suggesting putting Starlinks on his planes:
Ryanair launched a marketing campaign afterwards (named “big idiot”) and they allegedly generated millions thanks to it.
#3 Drama in the PMS world: Cloudbeds vs. Mews
And speaking of guerrilla marketing, look what the cat dragged in today: Adam Harris, Cloudbeds CEO, posted this on LinkedIn a few hours ago:
But that’s not it, Jacob Messina, Stayntouch CEO, commented on this same post with his own version:
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, this post is going viral as I write this. But to me, this tells you how brutal the competition in the PMS market is right now. I wonder if (and how) Mews will respond to this.
By the way, there are two updates related with the protagonists this week:
Stayntouch reported its best quarter ever in Q1 2026, with new business revenue up 75% year-over-year, and hotel rooms under contract growing by 106% compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
Mews launches Mews Business Intelligence, a native analytics platform that gives hotels real-time performance data and customizable dashboards without manual reporting.
#4 The 2026 HotelTech salary report is out
Do you remember when I mentioned this great initiative of benchmarking salaries in hotel tech? Well they managed to pull this off and they published a great report about this topic. It covers compensation benchmarks, work patterns, and job satisfaction across the industry.
If you’re searching for a new job or just curious, this is a great resource. You need to leave your email though (small price if you ask me 🤓).
#5 My Place Hotels turns pet fees into loyalty points
My Place Hotels has launched My Pet Points, a new perk inside their Stay Rewarded loyalty program that lets members earn 10 points per dollar spent on pet fees during a qualifying stay.
The program builds directly on My Place Hotels existing loyalty structure, adding pet fees as a new earning category.
Gen Z is driving a significant part of the recent growth in pet ownership, and US pet spending is projected to hit $165 billion in 2026.
The launch came with a physical activation: pet toys and plush dogs were sent to all properties ahead of the rollout.
Members already get perks like early check-in, late check-out, and exclusive offers alongside their points.
I love this initiative, and I think the pet travel niche is bigger than most hotels treat it. This program is a good example of a simple idea executed well. You don't need a major tech investment to capture this market. What you need is a clear signal to pet owners that you see them as more than a nuisance with an extra fee attached.
#6 Hotel tech just crossed $1 billion in funding
One more about PMS: hospitality tech startups raised more than $1 billion across 40 companies between April 2025 and March 2026, with PMS and AI platforms capturing the largest slice of investment.
PMS companies alone accounted for over $408 million across seven companies, and AI guest experience platforms added another $152 million on top of that. The direction is clear: investors are backing the systems that sit closest to daily hotel operations.
What's interesting is where this goes next. The PMS is already absorbing more functionality, add a serious AI layer on top of that operational core, and you start to wonder how far we are from something that could genuinely be called an AI PMS. Not an AI feature inside a PMS. An actual AI-first property management system built from scratch around the decisions a hotel makes every day.
RESOURCES
📍 Next Event: International Hotel Technology Forum (21–23 April).
📅 See the full hotel tech event calendar.
💼 Check which hotel tech companies offer remote jobs.
💻 Get your cloud PMS comparison list.
PRODUCT UPDATES
💰 Otel AI closes €2.8M in total funding to build a platform that connects hotel systems like payroll, revenue management, and F&B in one place. The Irish startup was approached off-market after GMs were already using it daily and seeing results.
🆕 SiteMinder expands its platform to connect hotel inventory with AI booking environments, including ChatGPT and Claude, while also opening its channel manager to OTAs that complete full bookings on behalf of guests.
🛒 Travelgate acquires AO UK to add content orchestration natively into its hotel distribution platform. AO UK brings nearly 20 years of product information expertise and combines multiple features in a single tool with assisted publishing across channels.
🔌 Flexkeeping and MARA Solutions launch an integration that turns guest reviews into operational tasks. When MARA detects an issue in online feedback, a service ticket gets created and assigned in Flexkeeping automatically.
🤝 happyhotel joins HotelMinder, bringing automated dynamic pricing to independent hotels that don't have a dedicated revenue manager. The RMS integrates with more than 13 PMS systems including Mews, Apaleo, Opera, and Little Hotelier.
JOB BOARD
💼 Sales Manager | Remote (based in the US) | Cloudbeds.
💼 Senior Manager, Customer Operations | Remote (based in the US) | Duetto.
💼 Commercial Director DACH | Remote (based in Germany) | RoomPriceGenie.
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