Welcome to RemoteHotelier #78!
In today’s newsletter:
📊 Cloudbeds builds its own RMS
🤖 Meta's new AI agent can book your flight… and hotels?
💵 Digital tipping becomes the hotel’s newest software category
🤝 + 3 new deals
🆕 + 4 new product updates
💼 + 3 new jobs in hotel tech
📊 Cloudbeds builds its own RMS
Credit: cloudbeds.com
The news of this week is that Cloudbeds is launching its own revenue management system.
They’re building it based on its unified data layer Signals that pulls together reservations, booking pace, occupancy, time to arrival, length of stay, and channel behavior alongside competitor rates and market demand.
It also has an autopilot feature that handles routine rate changes inside the limits and exceptions each property sets.
Because the RMS lives inside the Cloudbeds platform, accepted rate changes flow straight into the PMS and channel manager with no extra steps.
Forecast and occupancy data can also trigger targeted campaigns through Cloudbeds Guest Marketing during slow periods.
PMS companies stopped acting like dumb plain databases years ago and started building their own additional products. Arguably, RMS is one of the most profitable add-ons for a PMS.
But building a real RMS isn't something every PMS can do overnight. Cloudbeds isn't the first PMS to launch its own pricing engine (and it won't be the last). But what separates a good RMS from the average is the data behind it, and Cloudbeds has years of integrations with third party RMS providers feeding it exactly that.
One idea behind ecosystems is that if you’re a hotel and you already use a PMS and RMS from the same company, why would you look elsewhere for extra services that the same vendor can offer?
🤖 Meta's new AI agent can book your flight… and hotels?
One more release: Meta launched Muse, an AI agent that, among other things, can book flights by itself. Hotel bookings aren't part of Muse yet, but they’re on the roadmap.
So what happens when it can? Almost nothing because Muse handles flights first only because flight inventory is standardized and plugs cleanly into an API.
Hotel inventory is a different beast. Rates, availability, and loyalty pricing still sit behind a patchwork of different systems. Also, a general purpose AI agent is more likely to get used for a quick business trip than a family vacation, so the segment worth watching isn't leisure guests, it's corporate accounts.
Corporate is the slice of the market most likely to use this type of technology. However, I reckon that because of its cost, only the big gorillas will compete for it. Independent hotels shouldn't feel like they're missing out here. This looks aimed at large corporate accounts and the companies that can afford to chase them, not at smaller properties.
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RESOURCES
📍 Next Event: Skift Global Forum (22–24 September).
📅 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.
💵 Digital tipping becomes the hotel newest software category
I loved this piece on digital tipping because it checks three boxes at the same time:
Guests already pay for everything with a tap, so a QR code at checkout or a link in a digital receipt just extends a habit they've already got.
Staff get a system that's actually more likely to pay them, since a QR prompt catches gratuities a guest would otherwise skip for lack of a bill.
These platforms plug straight into payroll, so management gets a legal and auditable trail instead of an envelope that may or may not make it to the right person.
Honestly, for a mid size property or bigger, this is pennies on the dollar. The integration cost is small next to what it replaces: manual counting, manual logging, and issues among the staff.
DEALS
🤝 Starboard and LaSalle acquire seven Accor hotels in the UK: the 913 room portfolio spans in key locations like Birmingham, Sheffield, Luton, Southampton, and London. [Link]
This deal brings Starboard past 28 hotels and 3,000 rooms, proof that UK regional portfolios still find buyers even in a cautious market.
🤝 Marriott signs a three-property deal in Azerbaijan and Georgia: the agreement with PASHA Real Estate Group adds The Ritz-Carlton Baku, Zagulba, and Le Méridien Tbilisi, totaling more than 500 rooms and apartments. [Link]
Marriott keeps pushing luxury brands towards the east of Europe, betting the Caucasus has more room to grow than a saturated Western Europe.
🤝 Aimbridge takes over three Gorman & Company hotels: the 330-room portfolio in Wisconsin and Illinois marks Gorman's first move into third-party management. [Link]
Even owners who self-manage for decades eventually decide operations aren't their core skill.
PRODUCT UPDATES
🆕 Marriott and Spotnana connect directly to Marriott's reservation system: corporate travelers get real-time pricing and inventory across more than 10,000 properties, plus the ability to modify bookings without an agent. [Link]
It follows Hilton's similar deal with Navan back in July.
🆕 NordVPN launches PriceMice, a browser extension that flags geo-based hotel pricing: it checks Booking rates from different countries and alerts users when a cheaper one turns up. [Link]
Geo-pricing is technically banned in the EU, so tools like this put pressure on OTAs to clean up a practice that was never fully transparent to start with.
🆕 Metafoodx launches a mobile app for real-time kitchen data: kitchen managers can now check consumption, overproduction, and scan activity from their phones instead of a desk. [Link]
I’ve never met a hotel chef who enjoys sitting down in front of the screen. This is good news for them.
🆕 Google removes its vacation rentals unit from Search in the EEA: the change follows Digital Markets Act compliance requirements, and Google says it hopes to bring the feature back eventually. [Link]
European STR hosts lose a free discovery channel at once, proof that regulation in this industry can reshape distribution faster than any product update.
JOB BOARD
💼 Customer Success Manager, Global Strategic Brands | Remote (based in United States) | Canary Technologies.
💼 Account Executive, Business Intelligence | Remote (based in Spain) | Lighthouse.
💼 Director Channel Growth | Remote (based in United States) | 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